Nostalgic Remedies
by Onomatopoeiafloon
Summary: Time; an indistinct, unfathomable thing. Untouchable...but when teen detective Mitsuhiko is sent hurtling into his past, he breaks those barriers. Chances to save the dead arise, but is the loss worth the gain in the end? Is there death for this Paradox?
1. Time's Turning Hands

_Disclaimer:_

_It's not mine..._

_**Yeah, so this ridiculous little idea has been niggling at me for awhile.**_

_**I love Mitsuhiko, he's my favorite of the Detective Boys, so I really wanted to do something starring him.**_

_**Which is how this idea was formed. :3**_

_**Pairings include:**_

_**ShinRan**_

_**HeiKaz**_

_**Kaioko (I think, Kaito and Aoko anyways)**_

_**SatouTakagi**_

_**GentaAyumi(possibly)**_

_**Mitsu?**_

_**(I like pairings for main characters, but I've gotten myself to love IggyAi too much to toss Ai at Mitsuhiko in this. X3 So I don't know if I'll make an OC, or pick up a minor character and make her un-minor or something like that...I was almost thinking Koizumi...X3 If anybody has a suggestion please feel free to point it out. Remember, in this Mitsuhiko is a teenager, pairing him with folks around Shinichi's age doesn't matter...)**_

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_Chapter One- Time's Turning Hands_

I walked with my head bent down low, watching with only vague interest as the rain splattered on the concrete outside of my umbrella. Genta and Ayumi were following behind me as well, and though we were walking home like usual we were quiet. We always were on this day I suppose.

We grew up together. We'd been friends since gradeschool, but I sometimes wonder if we would have stayed so close if it wasn't for the famous detective that became our close friend. Kudou Shinichi...though to us he will probably always be Edogawa Conan. It was ten years ago today that our friend was killed.

I can remember it all so clearly, and it doesn't help that the rain is pouring now like it was then either. Back then we were just starting as detectives, we weren't really all that great at it, couldn't be since we were merely children. Looking back now I can see how obvious it was that Conan just wasn't like the rest of us.

I remember that, on that day, we were all told to stay with the Hakase and not leave. No matter what. Of course after a few hours of worrying we didn't follow those orders at all. We ran, using some of the extra tracking glasses to find our good friend. Find him we did...lying in a puddle in an alley...surrounded by his own blood.

Even then I think he was guilty for having lied to us. Of course it was only done for his safety, our safety, that he kept such a secret from us. That he was Kudou Shinichi, shrunken down because of a witnessed transaction. It was almost unbelievable, and I don't think we would have believed it...if it hadn't been his very last words to us.

Haibara had told us everything of the truth that day as well. She didn't have to, I suppose, no matter how stubborn we must have seemed then. After all, we were merely children. Because of that fact we hadn't been able to protect our best friend.

Of course it was an entirely different matter now. We, the Detective Boys, were some of the most famous teenagers of our generation. Every case that we ran into was solved, fairly easily. It's always been a bit of a teamwork thing for us, though we've proven on several occassions that we are perfectly capable of solving cases without the help of our friends.

Kudou Shinichi had been something of a mentor to us, after all.

At the moment we were all headed to the Hakase's house. We often visited him after school, but today was special because of the anniversary of our friend's death. It was a bit of a rule for us, to go with the Hakase to visit his grave. The grave that was marked by his fake name of course, Edogawa Conan.

I wonder to this day why they still haven't told Ran-san that Conan was Shinichi. She still waits for him, and it kills me to see her do that. I winced a little at the thought of her, she would be at the grave as well. It always pained me a little to see her. She always looked so sad...of course visiting a grave was rarely a moment for happiness.

"Shit!" Genta said very loudly, jarring me from my depressing thoughts. It seemed that a passing car had somehow managed to drench him. He shook out his hands with an irritated look plastered on his face, "Sheesh, you'd think they would slow down when it's raining so hard."

"Maybe you shouldn't walk so close to the curb Genta." Ayumi teased, stepping away from him so as to not get any of the excess water on herself as well. Genta just sighed forlornly.

"Practically no point in carrying an umbrella when things like that happen, ne, Genta?" I said, giving him a small smile. I jumped back away from the curb as another car came buzzing by, sending a spray up that plastered Genta and Ayumi as well. I covered my mouth with my hand to hide my amusement as they both stared after the car in irritation.

"Great...I'll have to go home and change. I can't go visit Conan-kun covered in mud." Ayumi complained, trying to wipe off the black dress she had been wearing. Genta grunted in agreement.

That just goes to show you how much Genta cares about Conan. After all, he was never the type of person that would get cleaned up for something like this. It sometimes floored me, the amount of respect my usually tactless friend could summon up for somebody who had been gone for so long.

"I'll head on to the Hakase's ahead of you guys then." I said, waving them off.

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"Hakase?" I called, opening the door a crack. The television was running, and the house was warm. I got an answer that was called up from the basement. I slipped off my shoes and placed my umbrella near the door before walking into the house that had become something of a second home for me, though it had recently gone under a renovation. The floor was all wood now, and the walls were a warmer color.

"Ah, Mitsuhiko." Agasa-hakase said as he came out of basement. Time hadn't been too cruel to him, though he did look a bit more wrinkled than he had when I was a child. He blinked and adjusted his glasses, "Ayumi and Genta aren't here yet?"

"No, they had an unfortunate run-in with some water on the way home." I stated. I sat down on the couch and watched the television with only some mild interest, "Oh? This is the coverage on our last case right? The one that we had on the beach..."

"Yes. You three did very well on it I heard." Agasa said with a warm smile. He sat down in the chair acrossed from me, his knees popping as he did so. The elderly man offered me one of the bevarages he'd already set out on the table and I picked one up. "Shinichi would have been very proud."

"Do you think so?" I queried, looking out at the pouring rain. It was a nice thought, to think that our old friend would think highly of us. He had been one of the best. "That's what Heiji-kun said as well, when we saw him in Osaka last month."

"I heard that his wife is having a baby." Agasa said, grinning. "I'd like to see it when they do. What was her name again? The woman that he married..."

"Kazuha-chan." I said with a small smile. The wedding had been a few years ago, and it was about time that they had a baby as well. I blinked, my eyes going to the opened basement door before I queried, "Agasa-hakase, are you working on something again? I noticed that you came from down there..."

"Oh, ha-ha..." Agasa laughed, rubbing the back of his head. "You see that's just something I've been doing in my spare time. It's nothing important really, but I'd appreciate it if you didn't go down there Mitsuhiko."

"Sure." I said, hating how my curiosity was doubled by his mere words. Now I wanted to know what was down there ten times more than I had earlier. Something about being told I couldn't go somewhere just made me more curious about it, probably a detective thing. In an attempt to distract myself I said, "Ayumi's taken up karate."

"Has she?" Agasa said, looking mildly surprised.

"Mmmhmm...Ran-san is her teacher. She says it's actually kind of nice to see her more often." I shrugged my shoulders and smiled a little. "It will only be useful I suppose, if she knows karate it'll make us that much harder to get rid of for criminals. Something like that will definitely come in handy."

"Shinichi always said things like that. It's why he was so good at soccer." Agasa said with a sad sort of smile.

"He was definitely right about things like that. I can play piano and that's been surprisingly helpful in cases. You wouldn't think that but...that and Heiji-kun suggested I take kendo, and I might do that if I find the money for lessons...and Genta learned how to play American football when he was over there last year." I smiled thoughtfully, "He really does enjoy tackling people."

The phone rang, and Agasa got up to answer it. I only half-listened to what he was saying, forcing myself to tune out the words out of politeness more than anything. Sometimes being observant could be just intrusive, and you had to know when the best time was to use your abilities.

"That was Ran-kun." Agasa said, reaching for his coat and hat. "I'm going to have to go pick her up it seems, she's having a hard time finding a taxi. I hope you don't mind if I leave you alone for a few moments Mitsuhiko?"

"No, that's fine." I said with a smile. The elderly man left the house and I sat back in the couch. My eyes somehow, inevitably really, darted back to the half-opened door to the basement. I turned to look back at the television screen, trying to ignore it. Yet, as if it were some sort of magnet, I found myself glancing at it again.

He specifically asked me not to go down there. It'd be incredibly rude of me to ignore that request and do it anyways. I got up and walked over to the door, telling myself I was just going to shut it so it wouldn't bother me so much. When I placed my hand on the handle I stopped, chewing my lip.

Really, would it be so hurtful?

But no. As a guest I was inclined to respect boundaries...

As a detective, however, wasn't I inclined to respect my own curiosity?

With a snort I shut the door and walked away from it. I was thinking that I should just wait outside for Genta and Ayumi, rain or no rain. I reached for my umbrella after putting my shoes on and glanced over my shoulder at the door.

It was like it was calling to me or something. With a frown I strode acrossed the room, and opened the door. I walked down the basement stairs, it was only to convince myself that I was just being ridiculous for feeling so overly curious over things anyways. I let my eyes sweep around the room...

They stopped almost immediately on the strange object on the table. My curiousity piqued and I walked a little closer. It seemed to be...a small MRI machine or something. I rubbed my head, wondering if the Hakase was just making something for small animals...though that was a little on the strange side.

"What's this?" I mumbled, noticing the writing that was written on the side. "Turn the dial right to reverse the flow, and left to speed it forward?"

That was...confusing. It was also intriguing, my fingers suddenly itched to turn the small dial. I reached for it, before pulling my hand back at the last instant. After all, the Hakase did create things that sometimes ended up exploding in his face. Still...one little twist couldn't really hurt. I twisted the small dial to the right and waited.

Nothing happened. I frowned, and turned to go back up the stairs. It wasn't until I reached the step at the very top that I paused, my head tipped to one side. Several musical notes had suddenly gone through the air, ten major chords, and three minor chords to be precise. I turned to look back at the small machine and my mouth dropped open.

It was...emitting some kind of golden web. I staggered back, my foot slipping on the top stair as I did so. I began to fall, my stomach lurched and my heart began to pound in my throat. Really, wouldn't it just be fantastic if I broke my neck because of my own stupid curiosity?

As I was falling I was aware of the fact that it was suddenly completely dark, yet the wind was roaring passed me at such a speed that it physically hurt. After that I heard the same notes, played in reverse order. Then I struck the ground, so hard that the wind was driven from my body.

"Owww..." I said, rubbing my back as I looked around. That was weird, the machine was gone. I felt the color suddenly drain from my face...oh no. I'd probably managed to break it somehow. My eyes went to the other strange thing in the room instantly, my head tipped to one side, "That old computer wasn't there before. I could have sworn the Hakase was using that laptop we got him for Christmas last year..."

I trailed off, a sudden wave of nervousness washing over me. It was something ingrained into me from being a detective, a sort of sense that would tell me if something was off. Something was most definitely off right now. I walked up the stairs, and opened the door slowly.

What I saw was like a punch in the gut. The decor, everything was the way it had been ten years earlier. The house was completely empty, even though I had the sensation that it was certainly lived in. As I walked towards the door I noticed that my umbrella was missing, and I stepped outside.

Not a cloud in the sky.

"It's just some elaborate trick Mitsuhiko." I told myself, but the tree in the yard was supposed to be MUCH taller than that. I ran around the corner, and read the sign. The home had been sold to a family called Yoshi a few years ago, so they had covered the sign up.

But that sign was the one that had been there before. The one from my childhood.

If my deduction was correct...but no, that was impossible?

Not impossible, only very improbable.

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I was pelting down the street now, looking for somebody to talk to. I found a nearby school girl, one that was about my age, and grabbed her by the shoulders. She yelped in surprise for a moment as I leaned forward, "You, can you tell me...do you recognize who I am?"

"Who you...are?" She said, slapping my hands away and narrowing her eyes in irritation. I stared at her, recognition slamming into me like a ton of bricks. "No, should I?"

"You kind of resemble on of Conan-kun's friends." The girl behind her said in a more friendly way. I stared at her, eyes stretching even wider somehow. My heart was pounding frantically in my chest, I felt like somebody had dumped a bucket of ice over my head.

Because those girls...they were Sonoko-san and Ran-san. Two people who were supposed to be nearing their thirties by now...not...not this. It stepped back, looking between the two in utter disbelief. This couldn't be...Ran-san looked at me in something like pity and worry.

"Are you alright?" She asked me.

"Um...yes, I believe so." I said, forcing myself to sound calm. I gave her a small smile, "But I was wondering if it was possible if I could have the names of you lovely ladies?"

"Suzuki Sonoko and Mouri Ran!" Sonoko said brightly, making my heart plummet into my stomach. I tried to focus on how slightly disturbing it was that she had changed her tune so quickly. It seemed that as long as I was interested her in some way my grabbing her earlier was alright.

"Thank you very much!" I shouted, leaving them both to stare after me in a stunned way. I ran, heading back the way I'd come. My heart was pounding so hard that it made my head hurt slightly.

Somehow, that machine that I'd messed with...it sent me back in time. My mind pieced together the clues easily. Flow, the flow mentioned earlier must have been the flow of time. So turning the dial to the right had reversed it...that made things make sense. I needed to get back to the Hakase's...

Perhaps it would take some convincing, but I'd find some way to get him to understand the mess that I had been put in. Then we could both figure out a way to send me back somehow...What was that glint in the shadows just now?

I slowed to a stop, curiosity prickling through me like a disease. Really, I blame my ever meeting Conan-kun on that fact. After all, if I hadn't he would have never given me a taste for the excitement of a case. The thrill of using your intellect to corner a criminal. The unsatiable curiosity that made you look into suspicious things.

Two men were standing with their backs to me. Both were cloaked in black, and one had long silvery-blonde hair. The other was shorter than the blonde man, and a bit on the portly side...however there was a thuggish look to that portliness. They seemed to be focusing on something of some sort, and as I carefully edged forward I caught the words they were saying. "It will only be a matter of time before we kill him. Aniki...is his worth to us really gone?"

"Yes." The other man said coldly. The word chilled me to the bone, and realization slammed through me. I stumbled, and did something really stupid.

"Y-you're the ones who killed-" I broke off, because both of those men turned to look at me. My head caught up to the words that I blurted out like an idiot. This wasn't good, it wasn't good at all. I stepped back, and jerked in surprise when soft hands touched my shoulders.

"Looks like you let a little mouse overhear your conversation." The person who had me by the shoulders was a woman. A very pretty woman, but her eyes were too cold for my liking. I swallowed the lump in my throat as she grabbed me by the chin and came uncomfortably close to my face, "My, aren't you a cute one though. Lost little mouse?"

"Vermouth, you shouldn't be playing with spies." The long haired man gave me a look that froze my very innards. I started to pray, because there was no way that this man was going to let me get out of this situation alive. No amount of begging would bring me that.

"Vermouth's" fingers still held my chin, and while the man had been talking she had focused her eyes on him. Now that she was finished she locked eyes with mine. It was like she was trying to read me somehow. It made me uncomfortable, and the prescence of the evil man beside us didn't help things in that regard.

"Another silver bullet?" She mumbled. The words weren't audible, but I had trained myself to be able to read lips by now. I blinked in surprise as she let me go, and turned to the blonde man with a heavy sigh. "We should probably avoid shooting around here, Gin, with so many people around."

I was suddenly swamped by visions of them stuffing me into the trunk of their car, driving away, and then shooting me in the head in the middle of some desert. Or tying some concrete to my feet and dumping me in a river. I shuddered, but instead of grabbing me the blonde man only produced a small case from the inside of his dark jacket.

There was a strange amount of deadly intent, for something as simple as that. Perhaps it was the way he carried it, or the person who had it even. It wasn't a very large case, not much bigger than your average pencil case. It was thinner than that too. Like a miniaturized artist's kit or something. The case didn't have any writing on it. No letters or words of any kind for me to spot. It was simply a bland shade of gray, and yet I couldn't help but think that this case was going to be my death.

I jolted in surprise when the muscular thug yanked my arms back. Somehow I'd completely missed his darting around me. A surprisingly fast man, for one that looked so heavy-set. The one called Vermouth grabbed me by the hair and jerked my head up.

"This gives you a chance." The words were whispered in my ear. I stiffened, unable to process way she would be saying such things to me. "Though only one silver bullet is needed, there is no harm in having a few extras in case one happens to miss."

That analogy again, the one she'd mouthed earlier. I tried to look at this Vermouth woman from out of the corner of my eye, but the man called Gin was suddenly dominating my vision. Were these the exact people that had murdered my friend so long ago? Or...was that around this time? Had that murder occurred yet, in this new time I'd been taken to?

The simple case was opened, and I felt my eyes widen at what was inside. Pills, of all things. They didn't look to be anything out of the ordinary. Just simple red and white pills, all lined up in neat little rows. Gin grabbed one of these, and forced my mouth open.

I wanted to fight. To bite him. It would have been better than complying like this. I was just frozen in shock. I'd run into the murderers of my dear friend, and I was too weak to do anything about it. It was laughably pathetic really. I swallowed hard, fear coursing through me as I did so.

What exactly had I just swallowed?

"Leave him, he'll die." Gin said. The man got up and walked away. I was thrown to the ground, and Vermouth walked away after the two men.

The first pulse of pain bolted through my body, and I screamed.

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I didn't pass out. Kami I wish I had passed out. Or died. It would have been so much better to die. Blessed darkness...death...either way had to be better than the pain I had just endured. I was thinking...no, I was certain that there was nothing like that feeling in the whole world.

I ached all over, but gods be praised it was finished. I knew I wasn't dead, with every beat of my heart my muscles throbbed a little. Even after all that pain, and despite thinking that it would have been better to die, I was elated that I had survived.

Had that been poison? I wasn't entirely sure of that. I wished I had some sort of sample, anything, so that I could figure out it's scientific process. Something niggled at me in the back of my mind as I sat up, slowly, so as to not cause myself to get dizzy.

That was the Black Organization. The people who killed Kudou Shinichi in my childhood, and still haunted Haibara Ai's every waking moment. They were the people who stayed hidden in veiled shadows, the people who had Japan in the palm of their hands. They were the ones that had forced Haibara-san to make that poison...

Alarm. It was the first thing that came with the realization. A poison that the enemy used. A poison that shrunk Kudou Shinichi, and forced him to become the little boy that my friends and I befriended as children. A poison that didn't kill him like it was supposed to...

Slowly, ever so slowly, I glanced down at my hands. "Oh Kami." I whispered, the words coming out as hoarse as ever. My hands were small. They hadn't been this small in...well, in ten years. I staggered back, dizziness coming with the shock.

I never was one who handled overloads with emotion well. I'm the clinical guy. I get stuck on emotion, that's my problem with the cases and stuff. Emotional cases really get to me sometimes, and I'll just freeze up when I get on sensory overload.

I was a little overloaded at the moment.

Calm down, think logically. I had to gather myself and sit back against the wall of the alley. I stared down at my hands as if I was some sort of idiot who couldn't quite figure out what they had meant. Organize yourself Mitsuhiko...I sighed, and shut my eyes.

Take stock of everything that has happened. Everything. Organize it, look at it, and figure out exactly what it is you have to do next. I opened my eyes and stared at the opposite wall without really seeing it. I had gone to the Hakase's. I proved that curiosity did indeed kill felines, and decided to go downstairs to see what he was hiding. I touched it, and I most certainly should not have done that. Then this music came and when I could process any information I was in the basement. I ran out, and found out that I somehow travelled through time. Then I ran into Kudou-sensei's murderers and just got force fed the same poison that shrunk him into a kid when I was still young. To summarize, I traveled back ten years in time and took a drug that let me look the part too. I'm the same age physically now as I was back then.

Even organizing it all and thinking about everything had my head spinning around in an uncontrollable mess of jumbled thoughts. Should I go to the Hakase? Yet some part of me said not to do that. Wasn't it in the movies and stuff that they always said people travelling back in time couldn't let the past people know that they were from the future? Something like the butterfly effect?

But then, didn't that mean my just being here was causing problems for the future? I didn't want to dwell on that too much. If anything I would just stay away from the Hakase for now since I didn't really feel like explaining this all to him. I felt a stab of guilt. After all, I had directly disobeyed his future orders.

Then there was that other thing. That thing I had to do, because there could be a chance. But to do it, I'd have to find out where to stay here. The only place I could think of was...home. If worse came to worse I could just explain to them that I was a long-lost relative that looked oddly like young Mitsuhiko.

I needed to do that thing though, and to do it I would have to get close to my friend again. I was going to stop him from dying, at whatever cost to the future there would be.

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_**End chapter one! X3**_

_**Alright, I'm actually pretty satisfied with how this came out. :3**_

_**I like writing Mitsi-chan, he's very intelligent. A bit different from the rather sarcastic Iggy-kun that I've gotten used to writing. ^^**_

_**Reviews are loved**_


	2. Blending In

_Disclaimer:_

_I don't own anything_

_**I've had a ton of fun with this so far. **_

_**Oh, and as a quick note, though Mitsuhiko's over-polite attitude has loosened up over the years you'll notice that he still refers to his parents as Okaa-sama and Otou-sama. This is because the over-polite thing came from his home.**_

_**Akemi-chan- I'll be sure to! YES! I have a long-time fan! -strikes pose-**_

_**Elena Forest- Glad you like it. Screaming fangirlness is awesome, as long as it's directed at me. -cackles- Wait...that sometimes involves stalking...no stalking. That's where Streaky draws the line...X3**_

_**Artist2009- -reels in- Haha! I'm really glad that this was a hit! :3**_

_**Em Phantom- I'm happy you'll be reading this. X3 That's so cool, that you didn't realize who I was until the author's note. -is amused-**_

_**Azure- Thank...you? Lawl, that comment was a bit double-sided but I think I'll take it as it is. I'm glad that I surprised you...wait...erm...I hope you'll continue to read the story, and that despite the fact that you didn't think it would be interesting I hope you'll FIND it to be interesting. :3**_

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_Chapter Two- Blending In_

I took a deep breath and rolled up my sleeves. I'd been doing the same thing over and over for the better part of fifteen minutes. The entire time I kept my eyes riveted on the door knob that was sitting just in front of me.

How many times had I walked through this very door? How many times did I simply go in, tell Okaa-sama and Otou-sama hello, before heading upstairs to either fill out witness reports for the police or do my homework.

It was always so easy to walk through the front door of my home, but now I was almost afraid of it. Afraid, perhaps, of what was ahead of me if I were to walk inside. I ran the story over in my head, trying to weigh the consequences of me just telling my parents and hoping that they'd listen to me.

They'd think I was insane. As would Hakase and the others if I were to go to them. Another good reason to keep my mouth shut tight and play innocent little kid. I took a deep breath and grabbed the handle.

As I did this I felt a painsplitting headache tear through my skull. I winced, groaning outloud on accident. I could hear those same musical chimes from the time machine echoing in my ears. When I next opened my eyes I froze.

It was almost like I was seeing double at that instant...no, I wasn't seeing double. I was seeing much more than two images at once. My hand remained to the doorknob I was holding, and yet I was holding the other infinite number of doorknobs as well.

The music swirled around me, but the chimes hurt my head. My free hand went to my temple, I pressed the bottom of my palm against the side of my head. My teeth clenched together, and I wished that the music would stop playing.

I let my gaze drift to the doors. What did this mean? What was this? Was I...perhaps, dying? Did the drug somehow become active right at this moment? Yet something felt strange, as if my next action was pivotal.

Then I KNEW, even though there really is no logical way I could have. I knew what those doors meant, and what this strange extra vision meant as well. It meant that the action I was taking now would affect the future I was from somehow, that I could make decisions that could change for the better or the worst. Each door showed the infinite number of possibilites, the infinite number of reactions that could happen if I opened that door.

And I knew that for some reason it wouldn't affect me. I knew, somehow, that my childhood self was gone from this world. Where he was...or if he was safe, I couldn't be sure. Somehow my prescence had cancelled out his mere existance. So technically I had no childhood now. I just vanished out of thin air as a child, and therefore I shouldn't exist now.

But I DID exist now. Even though I didn't...Okay, I apologize. I realize this must be confusing. I can hardly comprehend it myself, and I'm still trying to figure out a way to make heads or tails of it scientifically myself. Let me try and explain in a better way.

Somehow, without being really told or anything, I knew that the Mitsuhiko I was as a child didn't exist anymore. This was due to my prescence here in the past. There can't be two Mitsuhiko's in the same place at the same time, so he was irradicated to make room for me. Whether or not he would reappear if I found a way home I was unsure, but I knew without a doubt that I was the only Mitsuhiko in this here.

Around the time I realized these things the musical notes increased in volume. I shut my eyes, but somehow I could still see all the doors. Each chime sent a stabbing pain through my head, and a throb through my stomach as well. Nasuea swept through me, and, because I was desperate for even the smallest of changes, I turned the doorknob.

The music seemed to shatter around me. My vision returned to normal, and I found myself blinking in a bewildered manner at the front hall of my house. My head whirled with the knowledge I had recieved...was it true? Was that...possible? Ha! Says the guy who just got sent through time and shrank down to a ten year old! Forgive me for being small minded, I sometimes forget that what seems impossible can be achieved by the beauty of science.

I knew that if I couldn't believe that logic then I'd have to believe my own eyes myself. Unless I was with Agasa I should have been home at this time of the day. I walked down the hall, and nearly jumped out of my over sized clothes when my father hastily rounded the corner.

"Mitsuhiko-kun?" Otou-sama said, stopping his act of adjusting his suit to peer at me in something like bewilderment. His eyes narrowed slightly and he tipped his head to one side in confusion, "What in the world are you wearing?"

"Eh?" I squeaked out, realizing belatedly that any story I had concoted relied on the fact that another Mitsuhiko would be there. According to my strange intuition during that flash of extra visions, that was definitely not the case. "Hakase...I was...playing a game."

"Oh?" Otou-sama said, blinking at me twice more. "Mitsuhiko-kun it is...er...rather lady-like of you to be playing dress up don't you think?"

My face flushed crimson. Oh how embarassing. Now my father had gotten an idea that I might have been showing symptoms of being gay or something. I mumbled a quick apology for taking up his time before darting around him and practically tripping over myself on my way to my room.

As soon as I got inside I slammed the door and stared at the opposite wall. I didn't move for a few moments, I just remained very still and tried to process exactly what had happened. I winced as I slid down to the floor.

Strange visions that had me knowing things I'd never been told? That bothered me a little bit...perhaps it was a side effect of some sort from the machine? That being said...would it happen again? The experience had been anything but pleasant. Sickening really.

I frowned, my eyes darting to the clock on my bedside. I'd long since changed my bed to a bigger size at home, it was a bit strange to see the old little one sitting in the middle of my room. I crossed the room to my dresser and quickly changed into more fitting clothing. At least my taste in clothes hadn't drastically changed since my childhood, though some of the Kamen Yaiba things had me chuckling and shaking my head in amusement.

After that had worn off I was almost floored by how surreal this whole experience was in the first place. I sat at the edge of my bed and let myself just stare at the room right out of my childhood.

Before I knew what was happening I slowly drifted off to sleep...

* * *

_Rain spattered endlessly on the alley street. I pelted down, hardly aware of it. Only remembering the cold knowledge that somebody was going to die. Ayumi and Genta were hard on my heels as I rounded the corner._

_"Conan-kun!" Ayumi's agonized shriek shattered the rainy air._

"Mitsuhiko-kun!" My mother's voice tore through my dream-memory as if it was as fragile as a cobweb. I jerked to attention, realizing quickly that everything in my life had dramatically changed. And that I had a second chance at stopping my friend from ever being killed. My mother peered at me from the door, "Dear are you alright? You look all dressed for school but you were asleep..."

"Ah, I just drifted off Okaa-sama." I said, apology in my tone. I jumped out of bed and felt a secret relief as I grabbed my backpack and darted passed her. Having successfully avoided dinner and breakfast by sleeping through it just saved me the awkward trouble of being put on the spot by questions.

I ran out of the door to my house and down my walk. I collided, bodily, with whoever was standing in the middle of the sidewalk. I yelped as I fell back against the concrete, rubbing my head as I did so.

"Oi, Mitsuhiko!" Genta's irritated youthful voice had me looking up. "What where you're goin'? Damn..."

"Are you alright Mitsuhiko-kun?" Young Ayumi leaned close to me, concern in her pretty green eyes. I merely gaped at the two like the idiot I was at the moment, trying not to feel some amusement at how different they looked as children. (Because I most certainly was not one to talk at the moment)

"F-Fine Ayumi...chan." I remembered the honorific at the last moment. It had taken them forever to get me to drop them, since I was used to being so polite at home, but my two friends had slowly beaten it out of me. Now I had to start all over and use them again or risk having them suspect something was odd about me.

"Then get off the ground!" Genta said in an exasperratted and rather irritated tone of voice. I scrambled to my feet, and adjusted my backpack so that it was more comfortable. I felt a twinge of nervousness as I followed after my friends.

"Ah..." I said, feeling like I had butterflies in my stomach. "Are we...er, walking with Conan-kun today?"

The look I got in return told me just how idiotic he thought I was being. I muttered a quick apology, and ducked my head. A thrill of excitement and relief flooded through me. Happiness that my good friend wasn't dead yet.

We came to the corner where we would always meet up with Conan on the way to school, and I found myself staring at the person who had become something of a hero to me. After Conan died I spent hours studying his cases. He was a genius, and I hadn't even been aware of it while he was alive.

He looked like a normal kid...of course I knew better than that now. I realized that Conan really wasn't all that great at acting. He let slip a lot of little hints that pointed to his maturity that went beyond childhood years. He was just plain careless around us...

"Conan-kun!" Ayumi greeted him as my friend came up to us. I wondered, briefly, if it was at all possible that this all could be some cruel dream. Something to make me think that I had the chance to save him.

"Oi, Mitsuhiko why are you starin' at Conan like that?" Genta asked, making me jerk a little in surprise. I noticed my formerly deceased...or soon to be...ack, my friend who I had gotten used to being dead narrowed his eyes at me from behind his spectacles. I nervously rubbed the back of my head, "Ya look like ya haven't seen Conan in ages or somethin'."

_I haven't._ I thought privately, _This is the first time I've seen Conan-kun in ten years. And plus I never knew he was the most brilliant detective in the world when I ever said hello to him before..._

"Hello, Conan-kun." I said, and found that I was smiling at him. Conan blinked at me for a moment, before giving a slightly hesitant smile to me in return. I blinked up as Ran bent down to talk to us.

"Hello everyone, how are you all this morning?" Ran asked with a genuine smile. I haven't seen that smile in...well, in ten years. I blinked up at her, feeling a small thrill of joy and relief mixed together.

_I swear, I won't let Conan-kun die._ I thought, _You WILL get to hear the truth, Ran-oneesan._ I thought, determination flaring through me. I jumped when I felt a tap at my shoulder and turned to see Haibara staring at me calmly.

"You seemed to be lost in thought just now. That was an intense expression on your face, Tsubaryu-kun." Haibara spoke in her usual level tones, and I felt a twinge of awkwardness flash through me suddenly.

Both Conan...or rather, Kudou-kun, and Haibara were very smart people. Heck, Kudou Shinichi was...is, the most brilliant detective in the world right now. Fooling him...and Haibara...

That's about as easy as drinking an entire lakeful of water. The mere thought of it made me hesitant about what I would say or do. Goodness it's ridiculous how hard it is to act like I did in my past.

"Ah, n-no." I rubbed the back of my head, "I just keep thinking of...that Kamen Yaiba episode we watched together that one time."

Blank stares all around, okay, so it was obviously a lame excuse. Everyone seemed to know as much. They were all looking at me as if I'd sprouted wings out of my head. I coughed into my hand and turned on my heel to head towards school.

"Oi, Mitsuhiko-kun...where are you headed?" Conan's voice froze me in place. Oops, I was automatically going to the highschool. A nervous laugh bubbled up through me. Really, truly, there's a reason I'm the detective and not the criminal. I'm no good at keeping any sort of secret.

"You guys better get going." Ran said with a gentle smile. "See you after school Conan-kun, have a nice day!"

We walked to the school and I watched as Conan and Haibara went off into their own group leaving me to hang out with Ayumi and Genta. I tried to keep up with their conversation, but trying to remember what I had been interested in at the age of seven years old was a hard task indeed. I found myself wanting to go over to Haibara and Conan, just for the chance of some invigorating conversation.

It wasn't that I didn't care to hang around the younger Ayumi or Genta. They were my bestfriends as much as they will be ten years in my future. It was just that...it can get kind of boring , prattling on about television shows when you're used to discussing the latest trick in a mystery novel to them.

Oh Kami that's going to drive me half insane. No new books for me for awhile, unless I figure out how to get back home. Which brings up a small issue...if I really don't want to go about telling people what happened to me, then how in the world am I supposed to get back home? Should I really attempt to do it all on my own?

I guess that my first course of action towards that is digging up some information from Hakase. I frowned, biting the tip of my thumbnail as I thought. As I did this I heard a snort of irritation, jerking my head up I noticed that not only was Genta glaring at me, but everyone else was giving me odd looks again.

"Damn! You weren't payin' any attention!" Genta threw up his hands in exasperation and I felt a flush cover my cheeks. Nervously I glanced over at Conan, wondering if he was watching us with any interest. Noticing that he was made me dart my eyes quickly back to Genta once more.

"Ah...no, you see Genta..." I stared, "Kun, I just didn't...ah, get anything to eat at all last night or this morning. It seems that I was so tired out after everything that happened to me yesterday that I just passed out..."

I winced. Immediately realizing my idiotic mistake. I watched as Conan's eyes narrowed in my direction, and Genta and Ayumi looked at me with something akin to rabid curiosity. My mind scrambled to come up with something, anything, that would possibly appease their interest.

"What do you mean, what happened to you yesterday Mitsuhiko-kun?" Ayumi asked, voicing the question that everyone seemed to be thinking. I started to sweat a little under the pressure of everybody's stares.

"I...ah..." I blanched. _What can I say? Obviously not the truth...Well actually that wouldn't be bad. Chances are they'd find it so outrageous that they would merely think I was joking around. _"...went to the park?"

"Mou...Mitsuhiko-kuuuun..." Ayumi complained, looking at me in exasperation. Conan snorted in disbelief, standing in front of me and giving me a stern look that reminded me a little bit of my father.

"What is it that you were up to yesterday?" He asked, narrowing his eyes slightly. I slid my gaze away and focused on the street beyond, nervous and unable to keep eye contact with him while being so dishonest. Finally I locked eyes with him and offered a weak smile.

"I doubt you'd believe me if I told you, Conan-kun." I managed weakly. Complaints were issued from all around, but Conan was just looking at me with a strange expression on his face. I coughed and pushed passed my friend so that I was walking down the sidewalk. "We better hurry up, or we'll be late for class."

"Aaaa!" Genta yelped, looking at the watch on his wrist. I suddenly realized that my own watch looked worn compared to his, and I didn't have my detective badge on hand anymore. I kept it at home in a safe place for fear of losing it. I almost put my hands in my pockets to hide it, but if I tried to discreetly hide it Conan would just notice it that much more. At least **I **would.

"It seems as though we already are late." Haibara commented in a wry tone of voice. We picked up speed and barged our way into the classroom. I hesitated, waiting for my friends to take their seats before hesitantly placing myself in my own.

"What kept you all?" Sensei asked, I struggled to remember her name, but for some reason it escaped my grasp. We all winced under her stern gaze, and inwardly I chuckled a little. Being late for one class was of minor importance in our futures.

We sputtered our excuses, and she sighed and went to the front of the classroom. I sat back in my seat, organizing my pens and pencils neatly out on my desk. I winced, realizing that I was doing this in case of a pop quiz. That was hardly a likely scenario in a first grade classroom.

I spotted my homework, unfinished it seemed. With a slight wince I quickly wrote in the answers, easily going through the problems like they were nothing at all. I folded it up carefully and placed it in front of me.

I've always been rather tidy...actually my mother wonders if I have a compulsion disorder. It doesn't bother me or anything, I just like to keep my own stuff clean. If I really had a compulsion disorder like that I don't think that I'd be able to hang around Genta without going absolutely insane.

Would I have to wait another ten years to have the close friends I truly new? I knew that technically they were the same people, but I longed for their experience...the unfailing knowledge that they had the ability to back me up no matter what situation I got myself into. Or what situation they got themselves into.

"Mitsuhiko-kun, do you know the answer to the problem?" Sensei asked, a knowing smile on her lips. She'd caught me daydreaming. My eyes immediately darted to the board behind her, and I quickly answered.

"Fifteen." It was a simple enough problem, but I wonder if I should have acted as if I was having some trouble. Too little, too late. I wasn't about to take the time to act stupid when I really wasn't. I've always had a lot of pride for my intelligence, I value it very much.

Sensei passed out time tests. It was simple addition, and as I said before I didn't bother to slow down. If I was intelligent enough to finish it then I was intelligent enough to finish it. That's hardly enough reason for anybody to be suspicious of me.

"Mitsuhiko-kun..." Sensei said as I handed the paper in. "Don't you think it would be better to work through the problems more."

"It's okay, I know them." I said with a confident smile. _These mathematics could be done by a child...oh, ehehe, right..._

I sat down and cast a curious glance over at Conan. He had been watching me with something like interest for a few moments, until I returned to my seat. Now he seemed focused on his homework. I wondered why he was taking so much time with it. Surely he was intelligent enough to finish them as quickly as I...or even faster.

Or maybe he was purposefully failing. Was it really so odd for a student to be more intelligent than the rest of his class? _Well yes, if that student happens to be approximately ten years ahead of the rest of the class. That IS odd, and Conan-kun was supposed to be a genius even among his peers._

He glanced up, giving me a curious look in return to my staring. I winced and looked away again, focusing on the opposite wall instead. I wondered if I should somehow tell him about my situation again...if anybody would understand something like this it would be him wouldn't it?

I found myself stealing a glance at Haibara. She would be an option to tell as well, it was her poison after all. Would they both believe me, or would they just think I was completely and utterly insane? It seemed the latter would be more likely than anything else. After all, their situation was caused by that poison alone, me...I was also sent back in time.

_It's a lucky thing though, _I thought, a small twinge of relief going through me. I shut kept my eyes riveted on Haibara, _That the poison happened to not have complete affect on me. From what Haibara-san told us about that past, there was only a small percent of people that wouldn't be killed by that poison. Perhaps it has something to do with me travelling through time..._

I was aware, before I was outright spoken to, that there was giggling in the classroom. A detective has to be observant at all times, so the first time that Sensei said my name I glanced over at her. She had something of a smile on her face, "Mitsuhiko-kun, mind telling everybody what's so very interesting about Ai-chan's ear?"

"Eh?" I flushed in embarassment, realizing that I had been staring at her the whole time. I turned to look forward, determined not to let myself drift off again. It's not my fault if my schooling here is of little importance compared to my current situation. "Sorry."

"Just pay attention, Mitsuhiko-kun." Sensei said. Easier said than done to be honest with you. I've never had a problem paying attention in class, but it's rather boring when the subject is something you know very very well. The things we were being taught were trivial, and I longed for normal chemistry or calculas problems from my advanced classes.

My focus was easily beginning to slip away at the edges. I suddenly remembered, since it happened to be right in front of me, that Conan always wore an utterly bored expression during our classes. I completely understood that, and sympathized with him now. I was fighting to stay awake, let alone keep my focus.

Suddenly, and without warning at all, piercing agony went through my head. I gasped aloud, pitching forward and gripping the edge of my desk very hard. The confused remarks of my classmates drifted off into the distance, and became much like white noise to me. Those musical chimes seemed to dig into my brain, and I moaned aloud.

The vision again, but what was happening now? Infinite versions of the classroom flickered around me. I saw...a knife that was transparent. A stabbing pain started in my gut, I felt as if I was going to be ill for a few moments. A high pitched ringing noise went through my ears, and I heard the dripping of water somewhere among the chimes.

Silence slammed around me from all sides. I had the feeling that something had changed, or happened, but I couldn't possibly tell what it was. It wasn't like last time, I had no special knowledge of what had occurred. It left me feeling sick too. I remained with my forehead on my desk for a few moments, until a gentle hand was placed on my shoulder.

"Are you ill?" Haibara's tone was surprisingly kind. I remembered my childish crush on her, and felt my cheeks heat up once more. She wouldn't think of me as anything more than a small child to her, but we were technically around the same age now.

"J-just a small headache." I replied. It seemed to be fading away now at least. I sat up a little straighter and managed something close to a sigh of relief. "It seems to be going away now. I apologize, I didn't mean to cause anyone to have concern..."

Something was going to happen. I could feel it, and I had an awful feeling that my being here had altered situations to change it in that manner. I closed my eyes, trying to remember what I'd heard. The bell for lunch rang, and though by that time all physical after-effects had disappeared, I still had a foreboding feeling hovering over me.

I realized that I didn't know my combination to my locker anymore, heck I didn't know which locker was mine, I couldn't remember. So I just stood there staring at them blankly for a few moments. I had taken my backpack with me originally in the first place, since we had been so late. It wasn't like I had any lunch with me anways...

"Mitsuhiko-kun, are you alright?" Conan had a look of veiled concern in his eyes as he watched me. I offered him a weak smile and glanced down at the backpack in my hands. My mind was struggling down memory lane, trying to at least remember what locker number I'd had while I was in first grade. Don't laugh at me, it's harder than you'd think.

"I forgot my lunch today." I finally said, lifting my eyes to his face. He frowned, obviously realizing that wasn't what my whole problem was. Still he turned and with a grunt of something like irritation flipped open his cellphone. I blinked, "Wh-what are you doing Conan-kun?"

"Calling Ran-neechan." Shinichi said, "We still have an hour of lunch, I bet she'll take us to that hamburger place not far from here if I ask. She should have a free period right now..."

"Baka, how could you know something like that? You don't go to her class..." Genta sniffed in irritation and I watched with some vague amusement as Conan coughed into his hand at that comment. Of course he would know, I smiled to myself.

"Ran-neechan!" Conan said in a bright and happy voice. Part of me wondered if he was secretly just as happy to hear her voice as he sounded right now. The thought amused me a little, and I focused on the row of lockers to hide my chuckling. "Oh...I was just wondering if you would take us out for lunch. Mitsuhiko-kun forgot to bring himself something to eat today...Really? Thanks Ran-neechan!"

Conan snapped the phone shut, his bright demeanor dimming by quite a bit as he focused his intense blue gaze on me. I tried really hard not to snort with laughter at that almost accusing look. Instead I managed, "Thank you, Conan-kun."

Genta and Ayumi began to chatter excitedly about getting to eat at a restaraunt for lunch, and how exciting it would be to tell that to the rest of the class, as we walked out the door. I watched them with a small smile on my face, but was a bit surprised when Conan and Haibara didn't split into their seperate group as usual. Instead Conan came to walk over next to me, and I noticed that look of concern that he was trying to hide on his features again.

"Mitsuhiko-kun...did you...maybe see or hear something that has scared you in some way? You seem to be losing yourself into some very deep moments of thought." Conan's eyes locked on mine, and I felt thoroughly uncomfortable.

"It's nothing I'm not used to Conan-kun!" I finally replied, grinning at him a little. It was the truth...kind of. I faltered, "Well maybe not...that's not the point. I'm alright Conan-kun, I just keep thinking about things is all."

I wouldn't give him another chance to question me further, so I squeezed passed him to go wait with Ayumi and Genta for Ran at the gate to school. I was uncomfortably aware of Shinichi's gaze on the middle of my back.

And the strong sense of foreboding still churning in my gut.

* * *

_**So something is just around the corner...**_

_**X3 I'm really starting to love this fanfic! ^^ It's so...much fun to write. Mitsuhiko is just such a lovable character, and he has me cracking out my thesauras a bit sometimes too. :3**_

_**Reviews are always loved ^^**_


	3. The Vanishing Murder Weapon

_Disclaimer:_

_I own only the plot, and any random OC's poking their noses in here._

_**I love Mitsuhiko.**_

_**Like, really adore him. He's so much fun to write. **_

_**YAY! A case chapter! I love case chapters! They're so much fun, and I haven't written one since ages ago back somewhere in Blind Sided. X3**_

_**Funfact, because I found it amusing...**_

_**Did you know that the Shin in Shinichi's name stands for "true or real" and Ichi means "One" So basically his name means One of truth or True one :3**_

_**Ai's name means "love or affection" X3**_

_**And Ran's name means Orchid.**_

_**You know I never really noticed it but I don't think 'Conan' referrs to any of the Detective Boys using honorifics. X3 It just sounds weird in my head when I write the honorific out for some reason...so I left them off when Conan talks to them. If that's wrong I apologize. X3 I'll make sure to pay attention the next time I watch a DB episode.**_

_**Crystal Nephesia Hawklaw- Glad you think so. Here's the next chapter for you. The update following this one may take awhile though, since I'm going to be starting college next week I'll be super busy.**_

_**AkemiXchan- Lawl, your wish is my command. -bows- I'm totally willing to write out an idea...okay, hold on, I don't want to shoot myself in the foot with that. Let me see it first and see if I can work up the muse, THEN I'll see if I can write it out. X3 I tend to take on requests and then stare blankly at them like, "Okay, now how do I start this?"**_

_**Clue- Glad you're enjoying it. Ooo, I haven't heard that song I'll have to look it up. :3**_

_**Em Phantom- Yay! Thank you! Your reviews always make me feel a little special...Just don't let my head explode. We don't need a female writer version of Shinichi or anything. -shot-**_

_**Miyanoai- That's fine, I don't mind you reviewing on a phone or anything else. I just like to hear from everybody who is reading the story. :3 I'm glad you're enjoying the plot. What's next is what I call a "Case Chapter" but I tried to fix in some plotty stuff too. **_

_**Azure- -reels in- BWAHAHA! Hope I can keep you on the line then :3 -is brained by Kid for using too many fishing puns- Ow...you jerk. I thought you were a gentleman thief. -rubs head- Anyways, WILL Conan find out? Well...after you read this chapter I think you'll make your decision on that X3**_

_**Sock Monsta- Thank you. The idea was something kind of random that I finally went through with after reading a book called "The Hourglass Door" if you really like the time travel thing I bet you'd like that story. It's epic :3**_

_**Elena Forest- You know I think it's totally awesome that I know you by those two different names now. X3 Awkward/funny situations are a blast to write. -cackles- And I love the way Mitsi thinks. It's a different way to write, that's for sure. (This fanfic is wearing out my thesaurus X3) **_

_**Wha What's this box for- Nah, it's all good. Double-sided comments. X3 I'd spice up the title, but I actually rather like it myself. -ish stubborn- And if I think of something more interesting for the summary I'll spruce it up. Thank you for saying it's a great idea, it was honestly rather random. -shot- I'll update after this ASAP I promise :3**_

_**vbabe- Aren't they though? You should read "The Hourglass Door" it's kind of what made me go through with writing this fanfiction. X3 I love Vermouth, she's my favorite baddie most definitely. (And possibly Okiya, but I don't know which side he's on quite yet so...)**_

_**Black Sun Upon an Icy Sky- Thank you, and thank you. X3 I hope that it continues to get good, and that you continue to read it. Here is the next chapter for you. -tosses-**_

_**

* * *

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_Chapter Three- The Vanishing Murder Weapon_

I leaned against the gate at the entrance to the primary school. I was trying to figure out why I felt as if something bad was going to happen. I was secretly beginning to wonder if paranoia might have been a side effect of the apotoxin I'd been forced to take. From what Hattori-senpai said about the manner in which Conan often acted it sounded like it would be a definite possibility.

Was that the reason my gut was churning like this? But if Hattori-senpai was right...most of the time Kudou-kun ever felt something like a heightened sense of somebody watching him or following him...he was RIGHT the majority of the time.

That made me even more nervous than before, which is probably why I jerked when Haibara placed her hand on my shoulder. I snapped so violently out of my thoughts that my heart was pounding. She looked almost concerned as she calmly asked, "Tsubaryu-kun...are you alright?"

"Ah...I'm quite alright, Haibara-san." I replied, forcing a small smile. I jumped as Genta walked so close to me that I had to hop back to avoid falling over.

"You keep doing that!" Genta snorted, pointy a meaty finger in my direction. I felt a line of sweat trickle down the back of my head as Ayumi calmly, though with quite a bit of concern, looked over our large friend's shoulder.

"Mitsuhiko-kun has been drfiting off quite a bit today..." Ayumi softly said, I held up my hands and laughed a bit nervously. I tried to think of an excuse that could cover me for zoning out so much. Luckily I didn't have to.

"Conan-kun!" Ran's voice made everyone in our small group turn and glance in the direction of the karate champion. I felt a wave of relief as everyone seemed to be more interested in her now than me. "We better hurry over to the new burger place if we're going to get you back in time for your class."

"Hai!" Everyone practically shouted. I hurried after everybody as we walked after Ran, who I was rather grateful toward for getting me out of my spotlight...at least temporarily. The restaraunt was not all that far away, and though it seemed rather busy it had enough room for us.

We sat at the table and it wasn't long before a young man came to take our orders. It was only when he grabbed the menu after we had finished that I found myself blinking in surprise. This place seemed rather popular now but...

If I could recall correctly, it was NOT a good restaraunt in my time. Which was odd, the food appeared to be well cooked and people were certainly enjoying themselves...I shrugged my shoulders, pushing the thought into the back of my head.

After all, a lot could change in ten years. Perhaps the management got switched or something like it. Besides, it's not as though the popularity of a restaraunt is of great importance. I focused on watching Genta and Ayumi excitedly grab for the crayons that had been provided for us. On a whim I grabbed my own, and focused on shoving six years of forced art classes (Okaa-sama thought art to be rather enlightening) out the window as I tried to remember how well a child my age could normally draw.

The food came out rather quickly, as is the manner of a small restaraunt like this. I bit into my burger thoughtfully, and found myself thinking of how this little place was disliked in my own time.

Normally I would have brushed it off, in fact if you were paying attention you would have noticed that I tried to do just that. Yet there was something bothering me about this place...and for some reason I couldn't look beyond it.

"It's not as small as whether it was clean or not...or the management..." I mumbled to myself, picking up one of my fries and twisting it around between my fingers. "That's not it...that's not it at all..."

"What's not it, Mitsuhiko-kun?" Ran asked, sounding a little amused. I blinked, realizing I'd been speaking aloud, and rubbed the back of my head in nervous laughter.

"He keeps drifting off somewhere." Genta said, sounding somehow bored and irritated all at the same time. My nervous laugh grew in volume, and to shut it up I shoved my food in my mouth.

"Well he has SOMETHING on his mind." Conan said, narrowing his perceptive eyes in my direction. I made a quick attempt to put on an innocent smile, which only caused Conan to narrow his eyes further. Just as I was scrambling to think of something to say a young woman stopped by our table. She had a nice smile, and she bent down to our level as she spoke.

"Hello, are you all out of school for the day?" She asked in a friendly tone. I noticed that she was wearing the uniform that went with the restaurant we were eating at. My eyes scanned the nametage she wore, the manager?

"We're just eating lunch here because Mitsuhiko-kun forgot to bring something to school." Ayumi said with a cheerful smile. I gave the woman a polite smile of my own, and she was friendly enough to give me one in return.

"Well I hope you all are enjoying your food." The woman said kindly, "You can all call me Arisha-chan, if you have any trouble or anything you'd like to say about the restaraunt feel free to come and talk to me."

"You're very friendly to your customers." Conan said with a smile.

"We do pride ourselves in having a welcoming atmosphere." Arisha said giving Conan a smile that was reserved only for children people found to be rather cute. I inwardly laughed at that, a little amused. Arisha straightened up, her brow furrowing as the young man who waited on us earlier ran to her side.

"Arisha-sama..." The man shuffled his feet. He looked...rather flustered. As if something was greatly bothering him, or he was stressed out. I honestly couldn't tell the difference, reading people by their emotions and manner is not, unfortunately, a talent of mine. "Ryou-kun stopped sending food out five minutes ago...it's just been piling up..."

"Eh?" Arisha straightened, her brow furrowing in confusion. I let my gaze slip passed the young man standing there to peer at the petite looking girl behind him. She was trembling a little, though that might have been because of the way customers were angrily surrounding her and shouting.

There it was...that sensation that something was going to happen...or already had. I felt a twinge of nervousness as I jumped out of my chair, my eyes suddenly widening as I darted away from our table and through the angry customers.

"Cona...wait, Mitsuhiko-kun where-" Ran shouted behind me, so used to Conan vanishing that she had initially started to say his name as an automatic response. Something almost amusing, but I didn't have time for that now.

"The reason this was an unpopular restaraunt..." I panted. I ducked behind the counter, ignoring the sign that stated only employees could go beyond that point. The petite woman shouted at me, but I ignored her as I darted into the swinging doors that would lead into the kitchen.

A fast food restaraunt like this is either usually run by an assembly-line set up, or by a cook who can skillfully create meals in a very short amount of time. The latter seemed to be true for this restaraunt, as the kitchen housed only one occupant...and he happened to be dead.

The breath caught in my throat. I remembered now, belatedly, the reason this restaraunt was so very unpopular in my time. People didn't want to eat at a place a man had been murdered in...especially if he was killed in the kitchen.

He was sprawled out at an awkward position, blood had changed his simple white t-shirt to a shade of crimson. There were droplets of it scattered around the body, and his hand was covered in blood. I stepped carefully around the droplets, memorizing the way they were spattered against the counters nearby and the ground below...

My fingers sought out the all too familiar spot on his throat, and I felt a sigh go through me even though I'd been expecting it. So he was dead, he had no pulse...It was around the time that I was pulling my hand back that I heard Conan say behind me, "Mitsuhiko-kun..."

"He's dead." I said, aware of just how calm I sounded only after Ayumi shrieked bloody murder behind Conan. My shrunken peer jerked, and looked at her as Genta started stammering incoherently.

"What...Kami, Ryou-kun!" Arisha said, almost shoving both Ayumi and Genta out of the way as she tried to enter the kitchen. Conan stopped her, placing himself in her path and looking at her in a manner that was almost stubborn.

"You can't come in!" Conan said sharply.

"You'll only compromise the crime scene." Haibara's calm and collected voice had Arisha glancing over her shoulder. She stared at the panicked young woman and simply stated, "It would be good to call the police, don't you think?"

"An...ambulance..." Arisha was beginning to exhibit signs of shock. I glanced helplessly over at Conan who was looking beyond the woman with narrowed eyes. I tried to catch a glimpse of whatever had captured his attention, but by then Ran was blocking my way.

"Come with me..." She said softly, guiding Arisha away from the doorway. "Conan-kun, I'll call the police...stay put."

"Hai." Conan replied, but as soon as the girl walked out of the door he was hopping passed me to look at the crime-scene. I blinked, and followed suit a moment later, my curiosity captured by the situation.

Conan was leaning over, fingers prodding delicately at the dead man's hand. "He's still warm..." I said, causing him to blink and look at me, "And rigor mortis definitely hasn't set in. It makes sense though, I suppose, since he would have had to serve us lunch if he was the only cook. It's also doubtful that another employee would prepare meals with him in here, even if they were the culprit as it would lead to instant suspicion toward them...heh? That's weird..."

I trailed off, snapping out of my automatic habit of relaying information to my team members so quickly that I actually bit my tongue shutting my mouth. I had hardly noticed, but Conan was giving me a look of complete surprise. That surprise switched to a narrowed eyed look that greatly resembled suspicion.

"That...is to say..." I laughed, and pointed at the droplets near our feet. "That blood seems to be lighter than the rest of the blood, how come Conan-kun?"

I'm not as good at acting as Conan-kun is, obviously, and the only reason my voice sounded even remotely high was because I was nervous. My friend blinked at me for a few more moments before directing his attention to the droplets on the ground.

"It appears to be diluted..." He said slowly. Gaze following the broken trail of light colored spatters. I let my own eyes follow the path, and blinked when I saw what appeared to be the end of it, "The sink?"

"Did they try and wash the weapon clean?" I queried. It would do little good, luminol would show blood even after it had been washed down and years had passed. It was a stain that never went away.

Speaking of the weapon...I redirected my gaze back to the body, getting a bit closer as I did this. I heard Ayumi say from the doorway, "Mitsuhiko-kun...h-how come you can get so close to..."

"Ah?" I glanced up, blinking. "Well if you're careful nothing bad will happen...I won't mess anything up. I'm watching where I'm putting my feet and making sure I leave things the way they were."

"You never got this close to a body before." Conan spoke calmly, and though he wasn't looking at me I found myself shuffling my feet nervously. I tried to quickly think of something to say to get me out of the spotlight again...

"Ah..." I glanced over the heads of my friends and spotted Ran. "Ran-san! Do you...ah, do you know if everybody stayed in the restaraunt? You're not supposed to leave after a crime, ne, Conan-kun?"

I'm trying my best and it's not very good. At least Ran seemed to be in a mood that didn't suggest she was suspicious of me. She only smiled and nodded, having been used to dealing with the way people tended to drop like flies around her and her family now.

Still, this was becoming troublesome, having to hide my abilities. I would try my best, but solving the murder was more important than keeping my secrets, no matter how insane they would make me appear. And this murder...

It was supposed to go unsolved. They never found that killer, at least not in my original time. If I could help it I would change that. I glanced over at Conan and felt a thrill of confidence go through me. This case WOULD get solved, especially with Conan here. After all, originally Conan had no reason to come to this restaraunt today.

And I had a strange bit of excitement go through me. I know it's odd, because I actually participated in quite a few cases with my friend...but that had been before I recognized him as a personal hero.

I headed back into the kitchen, all thoughts of keeping a low profile going onto my back burner as my mind processed our current situation. I walked over to the back door in the kitchen, just wandering as I thought, and tipped my head to one side. I grabbed the handle after pulling my sleeve over my hand and yanked, but it wouldn't budge. I tried a few more times, but it still wouldn't move.

"Is it locked?" Conan asked me, I jumped and looked over at him. One of the employees, the man who had first noticed Ryou's disappearance, was standing in the doorway attempting to get Ayumi and Genta to go with him. When Conan asked this question he looked up in our direction.

"It's not locked, kids." He said. I inwardly twitched, but forced myself to remain unirritated. I most certainly wasn't a child, and Conan wasn't either...we just appeared to be. I focused on the rest of his words, "It's been broken for quite sometime, it just won't open no matter what you do."

"That's weird..." Conan said, eyes darting back to the door.

"And a fire safety violation." I stated, crossing my arms as I looked at the man. "Something like that is dangerous, especially in a kitchen. Of course it worked in our favor this time, I suppose, but it's still against safety code regulations for you to have a broken exit like that. If a fire were to start at the door of the kitchen people could be trapped in here and burned alive."

"G-gomen little boy..." Arisha shakily peered around the corner, avoiding the corner Ryou-kun was lying in with her eyes as she looked at Conan and I. "We just kept forg-forgetting about it and..."

"You said it worked out for the better, what did you mean by that little boy?" The male employee interrupted. I was suddenly aware of Conan's sharp gaze on me and I coughed nervously.

"W-well you see..." I stumbled over my words, "It's just that...if Ran-san made sure that nobody left and all the employees that were supposed to be here today ARE still here that should mean the murder weapon is still somewhere in the building."

Conan was looking surprised again, not something that you often see on his face I'm guessing. I shifted uncomfortably and flashed him a nervous look, "N-ne? Conan-kun?" I felt a wave of relief as he seemed to mistake my nervousness for me wondering if I'd said something stupid. (Though I wondered if this was a ruse, since as a child I usually stated any 'deductions' I made in the most confident of manners...) He smiled reassuringly and nodded his head.

"Conan-kun again?" The almost irritated sounding voice came from none other than Megure-keibu. The broad-shouldered man was standing in the door to the kitchen, with Takagi hanging out behind him. The flat stare was directed at Conan as he snorted, "I'm really beginning to wonder if you might be the one cursed...unless Mouri-kun's Shirigami has attached itself to you..."

"Eheheh..." Conan laughed nervously, rubbing the back of his head. "Ran-neechan made sure that ALL of the people stayed in the restaraunt, and this back door here is broken so that nobody can get in or out of it."

"Which means the murder weapon and murderer should still be in the building. Good job, Conan-kun." Takagi said. I snorted a little, I was the one who found the door, and technically it was Ran who made sure everybody had stayed put.

"How many suspects total then, Takagi?" Megure said, as the police detective opened his mouth to reply Conan ran him over with his own statement. Takagi blinked as though he couldn't quite figure out what went on as Conan said;

"Only the staff members can be considered suspects, since anybody else coming back here would arise some suspicions and catch the attention of either another member of the staff or a customer." Conan spoke in a very calm voice, but then noticed Ran was looking at him and quickly added, "Th-that's what Shinichi-niichan would say, ne?"

"The murder weapon can't be a knife, though he was clearly stabbed." I said, directing attention to me. I pointed at the hole in the man's chest, "You see the way it is shaped? The trauma around the wound, though it's hard to see thoroughly through the clothing, doesn't suggest the culprit used a knife. To make a circular hole like that you'd have to twist the knife around, something that is much harder to do than one would think, especially when wrestling with an opponent. The flesh be torn in a manner that would suggest this happened though, and that's not what the wound seems to suggest. This wound seems to tell me that the weapon was something like a skewer...or an ice-pick. A rod of some sort..."

"Oh?" Megure's flat stare was focused on me. I winced, realizing that getting shown up by a bunch of kids over and over was bound to be more than a little irritating, especially when they actually happened to be rather effective police officers.

"Don't feel bad Megure-keibu. That's not something everyday people can see without proper training, I spent a good chunk of last summer at a special program given by a coroner..." I trailed off, belatedly realizing that I'd just shot myself in the foot with my own words. Everybody was giving me an odd look now...

"Ah...that is...it was a program...program...that...was on the television! I remembered because I'm with Conan-kun and he lives with...that is...ah..." I floundered, knowing very well that I was terribly unconvincing at that moment.

That class (actually it was more like a series of college level courses involving cadavers and the like) had been something I prided myself in, and basically I had the intelligence to preform an autopsy if I really wanted to. Though I wasn't certified to do such at thing...

"Search for weapons similiar to what Mitsuhiko-kun mentioned then." Megure-keibu finally spoke, breaking the awkward silence that was hanging over me like a guillotine. I sighed in relief, and watched as the forensics team set to work. I was about towander around myself when somebody grabbed my shoulder, scaring the living daylights out of me.

It was Haibara. I blinked, and tried really hard to appear like normal little Mitsuhiko. Tried to act as if I was nothing more than a child, and that I had no knowledge of the fact that she wasn't a child either. Basically, I was trying not to say something stupid. Which is, as you may have noticed, something I'd begun to have a bit of trouble with.

"You're certainly active today..." She spoke calmly, her eyes on mine. I had the creepy sensation that she could read my mind for some reason. I shoved it aside, knowing full-well that it was a complete abusurdity. Still, I had to shove down my panic at being placed in the center of attention once again, and she was blinking at me curiously because of it.

"We...well you know...Conan-kun always says things like that so..." I felt like my mouth was filled with cotton as I ran out of things to say. I coughed, and held up my hands as I attempted to back away. However she kept her hand firmly on my shoulder, and her eyes remained steadfastly on mine, "H-Haibara-san?"

"Something...is different about you..." She said slowly, calmly. I swallowed a lump in my throat.

"O-oh? I hadn't noticed..." I offered her a smile, "I feel the same as I usually do, Haibara-san."

That was a flat out lie. I certainly never felt this paranoid, uncomfortable, small, and slightly pathetic ever before. Not even when I WAS this age, perhaps because at that time I truly didn't know any better. Still, I somehow managed to slip away from her, and hurry out of the kitchen and into the restaraunt.

Most of the customer's had been released, bar our little group actually, since they weren't to be considered suspects and the police probably had finished seeing if there were any witnesses. I ran around the counter, still intent on escaping Haibara, and as such collided head on with Conan.

"Owww..." I moaned, "Conan-kun you have a hard head..."

"Wari, wari, Mitsuhiko." Conan muttered, wincing as he rubbed his own head. He blinked at me, and I flinched, ready for an inquisitive question of some sort regarding my odd behavior. It came, inevitably, as my friend tipped his head to one side, "By the way, what program did you watch that had all that information?"

"Ah..." I floundered, "I can't seem to recall the title Conan-kun, ehehe..."

"Oh? That's convenient." Conan said flatly. I winced, he was the master at the old, 'it was on television' lie I suppose, or so it seemed from what Kogorou-ojisama said about Conan. Luckily, once again, I was shoved from the spotlight as the case dominated my peer's attention.

Our suspects had rounded the corner. The police had narrowed it down to those three employees, from what I heard Takagi saying, since they were the only ones without a solid alibi for the exact moment of the murder.

The first was Arisha, who was looking a bit less pale than previously. The other was the male who had waited on us earlier. He seemed uncomfortable, but oddly wasn't nearly as flustered as he had been before. (Odd because I would personally be ten-times more stressed out being suspected for murder than if orders were piling up...) The final suspect was the petite girl, who was wringing her hands and wiping at her eyes.

I wished, suddenly, for Ayumi from my time. She had trained herself to be able to tell what a person was really thinking merely by the way they wrinkled their forehead or shifted their eyes. It was a handy thing on cases.

I was sorely reminded that, for the first time in ten years, I was without my reliable team mates. I glanced over my shoulder at young Ayumi and Genta, and suddenly longed for Ayumi's determination to solve cases and Genta's steady strength. As children we meshed fine because we were on the same level, but now I was ahead of them and it was almost as if they weren't here at all.

"Who are these children?" The petite woman asked, looking down at Conan and I with something like concern. "Are they lost?"

"No, we're not lost." Conan said with a cheerful smile that actually would be better called a smirk. "We're here to help."

"C-Conan-kun..." Takagi said with a nervous laugh. I perked up, trying to make myself feel better by focusing on the task at hand instead of the absence of the friends I'd grown to rely on over ten years.

"Merely humble detectives searching for the truth." I spoke with a smile, and heard Conan chuckle a little at that. He'd do right to, I supposed. Kudou Shinichi wasn't known for being humble at all...if anything he had a reputation of having an ego the size of all of Japan.

"Detectives?" The man blinked a few times in something similar to bewilderment when Takagi cleared his throat behind us. We all glanced over at the dark skinned police detective as he opened up his note pad and looked at the group with a serious expression on his face.

"If you could all give me your names I would greatly appreciate it." Takagi said. Arisha stepped forward, looking at us with her large brown eyes for a moment before clearing her throat.

"I am Honda Arisha." Arisha said, she pointed at the male employee, "He is Schichirou Kota-kun, and the small girl over there is Uruhana Kyoko-chan."

"Ryou-kun...is he really dead?" Uruhana said, eyes flooding with tears. "He...he was my mentor...we...I can't believe it..."

"Oh?" I blinked, "If he was your mentor than how come you call him Ryou-kun? Wouldn't it be more polite of you to refer to him as Ryou-sensei?"

"Eh?" Uruhana looked down at me, appearing as though she was slightly uncomfortable for a moment as she shuffled her feet. She twisted the hem of her uniform in her hands and blinked a few times, "Did I call him Ryou-kun? I meant Ryou-sensei..."

"Ah-le-le?" Conan said, directing my attention not only to him but to the fact that Ran was in the hallway we were occupying at that moment. He had little reason to use such a childish phrase around Takagi, and no reason at all to use it around me. I glanced at her before looking over at him again, he was grabbing the edge of her shirt and I almost slapped my forehead.

Honestly, I know he appeared to be a small child but had he no couth? That was rude...if he did that looking like his normal self he'd probably get slapped. I opened my mouth to reprimand him, "Conan-kun..."

"You must have had something wet in your pocket!" Conan said cheerfully, pointing out that the pocket on her uniform shirt was indeed soaked through. Uruhana blinked, and pulled herself away from the shrunken boy with a nervous look on her face.

"Th-that? It's a bad habit of mine..." Uruhana muttered.

"What kind of habit..." I started to say but Schichirou stood up for the young woman, stepping forward and placing a hand on her shoulder in a gesture of comraderie.

"Please don't badger her children." He said calmly, "She has a silly way of picking up ice-cubes that fall from the defective ice maker onto the floor and putting them in her pockets for some reason. Since the icemaker isn't in the kitchen she doesn't walk all the way across the restaraunt to put them in the sink, you see?"

"Oh?" Conan said, narrowing his eyes at her slightly. I wondered what he could possibly think that this had to do with the case, but I didn't disregard it either. Often-times it was the most trivial of information that lead a detective to pivotal evidence.

"Is it true, Uruhana-san, that you and the victim had a previous intimate relationship?" Megure asked coming up behind us. Uruhana squirmed, looking even more uncomfortable than before.

"Yes, but that...we stopped seeing each other recently..." Uruhana said, "We didn't fight or anything, we just realized that our interests were elsewhere..."

At this she cast a glance over at Schichirou, who was blinking a bit in bewilderment. He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked at the ground, a light blush dusting his features. I looked back at Uruhana. The woman was rather small...

Would she have the strength to pierce a man in the manner that Ryou was stabbed? It was certainly a possibility, if she took a running start and put all of her weight and strength behind it she could. I backed away from the chattering group, intending to look at that wound again.

"Megure-keibu!" A forensics member ran up to our little group. I stopped in my discreet little retreat to watch the young man, "About the murder weapon..."

"You found it?" Takagi asked. The man frowned.

"No, there isn't a trace of it anywhere. We've checked all utensils in the shop that could be in relation to the cause of death, and even looked at tools that didn't match that description on them. None hold a trace of blood on them. In fact...the only thing with a trace of blood is the sink..." The forensics officer glanced up from his notebook and I found myself blinking in his direction.

I was so certain...I backed into the kitchen again, keeping my attention on this area. That murder weapon...it had vanished. There was no way for them to have put it outside, and the forensics team surely checked the trash.

I began opening cupboards and such, though it was a half-hearted gesture. The forensics team didn't consist of idiots, and they surely checked any place that you could hide a weapon. I even noticed that the screws on the vent had recently been removed, and after peering inside confirmed that there was nothing.

I knew that there had to be some trick involved. Murder weapons did not just disappear. I grabbed my head, trying to make myself think as I ran my fingers through my hair. It was Conan's calm voice that jerked me from my thinking, "You're thinking too hard."

"Ah?" I jumped, "Am I? I was just..."

Chin in hand my friend observed the room we were in. "When you eliminate the impossible whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

"The impossible in this situation is a vanishing murder weapon. They don't just disappear into thin air, there has to be something behind it." I said, "But what could it possibly be? How would a culprit hide a weapon so thoroughly...unless they swallowed it, that happened once we..."

I broke off abruptly, remembering that, one: that case hadn't occurred yet, and two: it would be something rather odd for me to bring up. I was going to offhandedly mention a time when Genta had figured out that the culprit had swallowed the pocket knife he used to kill the victim. The culprit had to be taken to the hospital, word of advice kiddies, don't swallow weapons, even if they can fold up. They can obstruct your intestine and kill you.

Well Conan didn't seem to notice my blunder anyways. "She." Conan said, correcting my choice of pronoun. I blinked as he glanced over his shoulder, "I'm sure that Uruhana-chan is the culprit."

"Why, because she dated the victim?" I asked, I couldn't help but question it. It was out of genuine curiosity that I was asking such a question, and he glanced over at me as I continued, "Or is it something else?"

"Call it intuition." Conan finally replied with a smirk. "A weapon that vanishes into thin air...vanishes...blood in the sink..."

He blinked, realization flooding into his eyes. I tried to catch up to his thought trail, but having only the broken bits of that sentence muttered as my guidance I found myself rather lost. Still, I felt a jolt go through me as he darted for the freezer.

"You don't think..." I said, jumping after him. I remembered, recently, that Ayumi had been reading an American novel about the victim of a serial killer, toward the end of this novel Ayumi was excitedly telling us that the villian had been killed...in a rather interesting way...

Conan wrenched open the freezer, and I had to jerk my head back to avoid getting clocked with the door. Still, I was jumping around him to peer inside as he scanned the contents. I pointed, "There Conan-kun!"

A styro-foam looking box, at a glance it was something of little importance, but he pulled it down. It was missing another half of it, you could see that little pieces of the styrofoam had come off...the edge must have been cut by something. There was a simply made imprint in it...this was made to keep something.

"MOST weapons don't vanish into thin-air, but this one could disappear with time...or heat." Conan said, I felt a flash of excitement going through me as the case seemed to unravel in front of my very eyes.

"It could be made to disappear after running heated water over the top of it." I said, "Which is why they couldn't find traces of blood on any of the utensils in the kitchen, but all over the sink. It also explains those diluted drops of blood, because the weapon..."

The serial killer in the end of that book Ayumi had read, he'd been killed by an icicle of all things. She'd been excited about it, laughing about nature's way of turning things on people, and how she'd be careful the next time she wandered under the eaves of a house.

"Was made of ice." We both said this at the same time, smirking. Conan blinked after a moment, his smirk changing to a slightly quizzical expression, "Mitsuhiko...?"

"Brilliant Conan-kun! Mitsuhiko-kun!" Ayumi said, startling us both into looking over at her. I hadn't even realized she and Genta were there, something that Genta obviously noticed because he was scowling at me irritably.

"We still don't have it completely solved though..." I pointed out with a nervous laugh. I was aware that Conan was watching me with new interest. Why in the world did I have to go ranting about like that? I hadn't sounded like a little kid at ALL back there. "We can't exactly link the weapon with our main suspect..."

I trailed off, locked into thinking suddenly. I played the scenario out in my mind, thinking of little Uruhana attacking the much taller Ryou. My eyes travelled over to the counter-top, taking in the way that the pans seemed to be scattered about.

"If she used all of her weight..." I muttered, "Conan-kun! I know how we can say that she had that weapon!"

"Eh?" Conan said, I grabbed him by the shoulders and practically grinned in his face I was so excited. "Oi, oi, Mitsuhiko calm down..."

"If she had to put all of her strength, all of her weight behind it, and make sure that the weapon didn't slip from her hands..." I trailed off, smirking as Conan suddenly brightened up. He nodded his head, and poor Ayumi and Genta looked between us as though slightly confused.

"I lost ya." Genta finally said.

"It would be cold to hold something like that..." Ayumi said slowly. I had to contain myself not to hug her, yet another thing that could be placed against that woman! We had her now! Conan seemed to think as much too because he was confidently striding toward the hallway.

"Oi, all of you listen to me...you're going to help me tell the others, ne?" Conan asked. I grinned and heard Genta and Ayumi cheer excitedly. Conan smirked, "Alright, here's what you all should do..."

* * *

As we rounded the corner I noticed that Arisha had recovered even further from when we last saw her. She was standing in front of her employees, hands on her hips, and her eyes flashing defiantly. "I've had just about enough of this, Keibu-san."

"Arisha-san we have to..." Takagi began, an attempt to back his superior up no doubt. Arisha shut the poor man down with the most potent glare I'd ever seen somebody give somebody ever before, and that's counting all the death-glares Haibara-san ever shot at my good friend Conan.

"You have no evidence, no grounds to hold us for questioning even further." Arisha said, "Listen, I may not look it but I happen to be a student in law school, this job is to fund that and I know full well that you cannot arrest somebody with no murder weapon, no proof that ties them to a murder, even if they DON'T have an alibi for the time of the crime. It's not enough to hold up in any court."

"We have proof!" Genta yelled. Conan was standing a little in front of Ayumi, Genta and I as we all looked up at the older people in the room. (Well, bar Ran for some of us. I'm thinking that I might actually be older than her at the moment) Haibara was behind the three of us.

"And it should be good in a court room...at least for a prosecuter." Haibara spoke with icy calm and I heard Conan let out a short laugh at that.

"That Onee-san over there, she killed Ryou-kun!" Ayumi said, pointing at Uruhana. The petite woman let out a sharp cry of panic, already crumbling under our harsh stares but Schichirou stepped between her and us with a look of fury flaring up in his eyes.

"That is ENOUGH, Uruhana is harmless. She wouldn't hurt a fly." Schichirou snapped, "You children, these accusations are no matter to just leap on. Leave this to the professionals."

"We're not just making acc...accupunctures." Genta said. We all nearly fell over in a heap. Conan was the first to recover, looking back at Genta with a rather flat look in his eyes. Genta blinked back at him.

"That's accusations, Genta..." I said, "Kun."

"Didn'tchya hear me say that we had proof?" Genta continued as if the matter hadn't even occurred. I sighed as the beefy child glared up at Schichirou. "If you think we're lying I'll...beat you up or something..."

"Oi, oi..." Conan said with a heavy sigh.

"No need to get violent." Takagi said, trying to calm our friend down. Genta shot Schichirou a rather sullen look but Takagi said, "What is it that you guys figured out then?"

"You're listening to them? They're children!" Schichirou protested.

"Conan-kun has helped us out plenty of times before." Megure spoke very calmly, "These children are more than a little intuitive, if you would be patient with us while we hear them out I would greatly appreciate it, Schichirou-kun."

"You premeditated it." Conan said calmly, "In the cold months of winter the idea came to you, making it's way into your heart that was hardened by a hatred. It was bad enough that you had to be with him in the first place, but then..."

"He said those words that made you finally decide to do it today, didn't he Uruhana-san?" I asked, looking the young woman in the eye. "But you always planned on killing him, that's why you kept the icicle in the freezer for so long. To use it as a weapon."

Uruhana's eyes stretched, her pupils shrank and she pulled her arm to her chest. "I...I don't know what you could possibly be talking about. I...would never..."

"The perfect murder weapon." Haibara said, she had her arms crossed over her chest as she spoke, and her eyes were narrowed at the young woman. "Because to dispose of it you only have to let nature take it's course. It will disappear in the heat...and if you're in a hurry running hot water over it will do."

"N-no..." Uruhana said, her eyes stretching wide as she let out a sharp laugh, "How would you children even come up with something...so outrageous as this?"

"We found this!" Ayumi said, pulling up the styro-foam object we'd recovered from the refrigerator. Haibara stepped up next to her as Takagi took the object and peered at it while blinking.

"It appears to have been a case for keeping what could have been the murder weapon. One that could disappear with time..." Haibara had to step aside as Genta practically leaped over to stand next to her.

"You used this thing to kill that guy!" Genta said.

"Because it was an icicle, or something similiar to it. I'm sure if you take a mold of the case it was kept in you'll find that what held it before matches the wound on the victim." Conan shot a confident smirk in Uruhana's direction at these words. She was quietly watching our group with wide eyes.

"Check this please." Megure said to one of the forensics people that was still hanging around. He took the small case and headed off to do just that.

"But children..." Uruhana smiled as though suddenly realizing something. Relief flooded her gaze as she bent down so that she could be closer to our level, "Though that could definitely be the murder weapon, and it was very clever of you to figure it out, that doesn't make me the person who killed-"

"The bruise." I said, she looked over at me, her eyes stretching wide in shock. "It should be somewhere on your body, Uruhana-san. Near your collar bone perhaps, the bruise that came from making sure that weapon could effectively kill Ryou-kun."

"You would have to put all of your strength, all of your weight, behind an attack if someone as small as you were to attack and kill somebody." Conan said calmly, "You'd have to brace it against your own body to make sure the weapon would pierce your victim and not slip from your hands."

We stopped, and glanced over at Genta. I jabbed him with my elbow, and he jerked, "Aah! Right, especially with something as slippery as ice!"

"It would be cold to hold that." Ayumi said, looking down at her hands and shivering, "I would want to wear gloves..."

"You still have them, don't you Uruhana-chan? Along with that bruise...you have the gloves that you used to hold the weapon...the gloves that are surely covered in Ryou-kun's blood." Conan asked. I quietly looked at the ground as she let a broken sob escape her.

"Stop this!" Schichirou said, but he stopped in bewilderment when Uruhana broke down crying. "Ky-Kyoko!"

"I couldn't...possibly hold on any longer." Uruhana said, her voice choked with sobs. "I...he...he wouldn't let me go. Even after months of me complying to his every whim, after months enduring the constant phone calls..."

She looked up, tear filled gaze scanning our faces. "He still wouldn't sign the divorce papers."

"D-divorce papers!" Schichirou sputtered, "But...but you said that you'd merely dated...you two...were actually married? H-how long Kyoko? How long!"

"Four months...nobody knew." Uruhana said with a tear-filled laugh. "Except Arisha-chan...she knew, but she never told anybody about it."

"I...thought that if you wanted it to be private..." Arisha trailed off, clutching her own hands tightly as if her fingers were cold. She avoided Uruhana's gaze as she asked, "Uruhana-chan...are you saying that...that you..."

"Yes, I killed him. Just as the children said." Uruhana said, "Back when we were just dating he was nearly hit with a falling icicle. He gave it to me as a memory for our date...I even had a special case made for it. My special ice spear that signified the arrow of Cupid-kun."

"Even as we were dating..." Schichirou let out a bitter laugh, "So I was causing you to cheat on him? It's a wonder why Ryou-kun was ever so kind to me..."

"No! He was merely trying to turn you against me!" Uruhana shouted, fury in her words. "He...he said that he'd never sign those papers unless things were perfect. Wasn't it him who always said there was no such thing as perfection? Wasn't he saying that we would never be seperated?"

She let out a sound that was half a sob, and half a laugh. "I don't know what possessed me to do it...I...I got the icicle from the freezer...I'd kept it there...because the one at home broke. I thought that maybe it was...a sign from the heavens. I remembered the gloves that Arisha-chan kept by the doors...for taking out the trash when the day was done."

I could almost picture the torn woman, trembling as she walked to the freezer. Ryou would be unsuspectedly trying to catch up on the orders he'd fallen behind on after speaking with Uruhana.

The door would be slowly opened, she'd pull the icicle from it's case and put it in her pocket. She'd make her way back to him, and climb up on the counter...

"I knew that if I attacked him from the ground they'd know by the height...so I climbed onto the countertop." Uruhana said, "I ran at him, and he turned around when he heard the sound of me coming. I...stabbed him then...and the icicle hurt me too, but I didn't feel it at the time."

So it had been that the death of Ryou came. Uruhana sobbed brokenly, muttering at how he was never going to let her go. Schichirou remained standing, looking down at Uruhana as if she was somebody he'd never seen before.

"Uruhana-san..." Takagi said, the woman looked up as the detective kneeled down next to her. "You should know that...Ryou-kun was trying to transfer as much money as he could into his joint account while withdrawing himself from it. He was going to leave it under only your name, but he was in trouble because they suspected that such actions had something to do with identity fraud...this was probably why..."

"He wouldn't sign your papers." Schichirou said, "He told me himself that he was going to do everything in his power to make sure we were happy together, Kyoko...Uruhana-chan. I didn't know what he'd meant at the time..."

"Nooo..." Uruhana said, "You're lying, you're lying..."

"You killed a man for no reason, Uruhana-chan." Schichirou said, his tone cold, "And for that I can't ever possibly forgive you. I apologize, children, for not listening to your words. If you'd excuse me Keibu-sama, Keiji-san..."

The young man left then, and Uruhana wept. Having lost the only two people in the world that had ever loved her before...she was left a broken mess, with even her happy memories tainted with blood...

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"So much for getting to class on time." Conan said as the police officers lead Uruhana off into the police car. I sighed, feeling a twinge of depression.

"It's a two-headed beast, detective work." I muttered to myself, "One is the exhiliration, the excitement generated at the chance to piece together the puzzles a culprit tries to shatter around us. The other is sadness, almost pity sometimes, for both the culprit and the victim in the end. You're never completely both with this."

"Wise words, for a child so young, ne Conan-kun?" Haibara said. I jerked, and laughed a little nervously. Obviously I'm just not cut out for keeping secrets. "Did you have a change in your life that has you thinking more seriously than usual?"

"Must be me hanging around you two all the time." I shot at her, "You're both so mature it's starting to rub off on me."

"Thank goodness, perhaps it'll also affect those other two..." Haibara replied without batting an eyelash, though Conan seemed to be a bit nervous suddenly. Probably because Ran was within earshot of us.

"School's out by now!" Genta said, beaming, "YES! Thank you case!"

"Genta-kun, somebody was killed!" Ayumi squeaked, looking at him in a scolding manner. I sweat-dropped as Genta only blinked at her blankly as if as much had been obvious to him all along. He rubbed the back of his head and laughed.

"Well I need to at least take you to your Sensei and tell her what happened." Ran said, looking down at us. "You all were very good today, it's almost like Shinichi was guiding you..."

I couldn't help but glance at Conan at that, who was looking slightly surprised and slightly panicked. Unfortunately I had forgotten that he wasn't the only one with his eye on me, and Haibara caught my look. I jerked my head away and ran between Ayumi and Genta.

"Let's hurry up so Ran-san has a chance to tell her school why she was gone as well. We don't want her to get into trouble because of this, ne?" I asked. Genta and Ayumi agreed quickly enough, still even as I walked away I felt Haibara's gaze between my shoulders.

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_**X3 Okay, sorry this took so long...but I ended up having to rewrite this ENTIRE chapter since my trial for Word ended on my computer.**_

_**Lawl, BTW, I got a spanish remix concerning DC and even though I only understand a few random words they're saying I find myself grinning like an idiot when I listen to it. X3**_

_**Well I know they say something about him being a super detective :P Gosh, I'm not kidding. You folks with an iPod, seriously by that song. X3**_

_**Also, special thanks to my sister Pickle (that's a nickname X3) for inspiring this chapter because of her idea of the "Perfect Weapon" sorry Pii, if Shinichi was there he'd totally figure it out. D: **_

_**She thought it would be the perfect weapon after reading that book that Mitsuhiko mentioned Ayumi reading. I haven't read it myself, but Pickle tends to tell me EVERYTHING about books that she really likes :3 I won't say the title, but if you know what it is feel free to PM it to me. Perhaps then I'll use a case idea of yours for this fanfiction! :D**_

_**Reviews**__** are forever and always loved so feel free to toss them my way. It's like nourishment for me, you don't want me to starve do ya?**_


	4. Happenings Keep Happening

_Disclaimer:_

_Don't own it_

_**Before we begin...**_

_**The name thing that was in funfacts was wrong X3**_

_**Thanks to the people who kindly pointed it out, so that people in the world didn't stew it to themselves and think "She's an idiot" X3**_

_**So it's not true, look it up if you'd like. I was just captivated by what this name dictionary thing said, and I'm thinking it was incorrect **_

_**-coughs-**_

_**Aaaannnnywaaaayss...**_

_**YAY! Happy day! I got Microsoft Word back!**_

_**I like word because I get a better feel for how long my chapters are.**_

_**Yet, sad Streaky in the corner is just starting her college days…**_

_**-sigh-**_

_**I'm in a bit of a depressed mood, usually when I'm not doing anything I just sit there and wish I was home…**_

_**And then I realize that technically I AM home, and I feel like throwing up.**_

_**Well, enough of that. On with reviews, and then the chapter you've all been waiting for!**_

_**Em Phantom- Lawl, I love Mitsi. He says the funniest things, and his dialogue actually comes very naturally. Strange, considering the weird words he uses X3**_

_**Pally- Lawl, that's right, you're Pally even here. X3 Got word back actually, right before showing up here in Dillon :D Which shows you how long this chapter took me to put up D: Thank you for the compliment about the case. I really worked hard on that one. X3 Plot-twists? Psssh...what plot-twists? (two show up in this chapter -coughs-)**_

_**AkemiXchan- Glad you do. It's coming at you...yeah there was somewhere clever I was going with this and I forgot. X3**_

_**X-chibifiedtantei-21- Lawl your name really amused me. X3 If you actually think about it...it'll be hard for even Shinichi to deduce the EXACT truth of what happened to Mitsuhiko. Where in the world would you pull "Time Machine" outta the deduction hat? X3 Unless he figured out Agasa was involved somehow maybe, and Mitsuhiko mentioned something about ten years in the future... Not something I'd put passed Mitsi...**_

_**Aleathiel Elendil- HI! X3 Feelings and predictions are fun to make, and it always feels awesome when you're right. (Are you right though X3) I'm glad you figured it out. Lawl, popsicle...X3 Twould be the most epic DC murder EVER.**_

_**Skippy the Hobolo- X3 Yeahhhhh...that's what Streaky gets for believing everything she reads. -coughs- X3 Thanks for the rating? **_

_**Black Sun Upon An Icy Sky- Good job X3 I would have never guessed...or would I? X3 I dunno. I tried to write it in a way that would have me not knowing what the dealeo was. **_

_**ruthc93- Thank you, again, for telling me his last name. As I mentioned, It's been driving me nuts...and as for Kobayashi-sensei -grins- Goood catch! I was worried nobody had noticed D: Shiri and Her happen to be a favorite couple of mine, so I definitely didn't miss her. It's actually a part of the story, which is mentioned in this chapter. X3 You'lllll seee...I'm glad you like it. Criticism is good, it makes me not do stupid things over and over :3**_

_**Miruial-X3 You know, I tend to grow a really strange attachment toward one of the background characters. I love the main characters, but there are some of the chars in DC that I randomly fell for that are just...well, not that important to the overall story-line. Like Chiba, Sonoko, Mitsuhiko here, Genta, and the Quacky Gunma Detective Yamamura? I think that's his name. I always call him "Quack" though XP**_

_**Sock Monsta- Teehee, I keep having urges for fish jokes with all of these hooked comments! Instead of bad puns I'll toss the chapter your way instead**_

_**

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**_

_Chapter Four- Happenings Keep Happening_

It may have become obvious by this point, but I am awful at lying. It was making my life a holy living heck at the moment, and by the time I started for home (alone, as I had somehow managed to slip away from my friends) after my third day of pretending I was young Mitsuhiko I was, quite honestly, rather sick of it.

Lying, big lying, in case you were wondering, SUCKS. I feel awful every time a word comes out of my mouth it seems, and another part of me is SURE that any second and my cover will be blown. And then there's the very real fear that the Organization will wise up to the fact that they've killed two people and couldn't find the corpse for either of them.

Sure, they probably killed all the time, but with people like that…they're bound to notice. I guess the only thing I really had going for me is that they'd try and find records on somebody who was a teenager that resembled me, and probably wouldn't find anything.

You know, since I happen to be from the future and all.

That didn't stop the nightmares, and I was beginning to wonder if it would be best to not live with my family. I tried to think of something, anything, an excuse to get me and the dangerous criminals I was hiding from as far away from my parents and family as possible.

It's not easy to come up with an excuse like that.

"Aren't you one of the brats hanging around with glasses dork all the time?" The voice caught me off guard, snapped me so violently from my thoughts that my head was snapping up and my eyes were stretching wide with surprise. Sonoko was standing with her hands on her hips, and unhappy smile plastered on her face. "What are you doing at the high school?"

"High…school." I blinked, and only just realized that I'd wandered into gates of the school. Thankfully it was after hours, and not many people were around to give me odd looks. I opened my mouth, and floundered, "It…ah, it seems I just wandered here by mistake."

Sonoko snorted, "Do I need to go out of my way to take you home?" She said the words in a nasty tone, but I knew Sonoko as a class friend of Ran's. She was actually nice, she just didn't like to show her softer side to many people.

"That's okay!" I replied, and darted off.

This place…who would have ever thought I'd feel an ache of longing to be walking through my high school? I've always been intelligent, and rather good at my classes, but going to school was still a bit of a chore. Now I missed it with all of my heart. Not just the classes that actually challenged my brain, but the people who I conversed with daily.

There, by the tree, is where Genta accidentally called Ayumi pretty while rambling on about something. I smiled fondly at the memory, remembering Genta's hasty stammering to correct the fact and Ayumi's pink cheeks. As a child I had a bit of a crush on Ayumi, but Genta and her had grown so close lately…and I discovered recently that I didn't mind at all.

There, that storage room next to the karate club was where the Detective Boys would make their base. So many hours of our lunch were spent there, and after school as well. I wandered over to the door, and pushed it open. Another pang went through me.

Nothing but dust and boxes. The place of my memories was gone…because it hasn't existed yet. I felt miserable, and I desperately wished for home. Which made my stomach churn with apprehension, and a nervousness that could be closely related to panic.

What was going to happen, when everything was said and done? Even after I fixed Conan's future so that he wouldn't be killed…how was I supposed to get back home? Would I EVER return to the place I'd grown so fond of?

Logically I knew that it would make little difference in the future. Technically everybody leaves home at some point in their life. I still had my family here, who would support me, and I even had my friends…albeit a younger version of them.

My fingers itched to be busy. It seems that I can think clearer as long as I'm doing something else, and there are some other things that I like to do to distract myself from the world. My eyes darted to another of the club doors and I found myself slipping inside.

Unsurprisingly there was a group inside, but it was large enough that most people didn't notice the small child lurking in the back. I inched my way over to the wall, and found my fingers skimming the smooth surfaces of a bow.

"That one would be much too large for you." A person at the head of the group spoke with a calm and friendly tone. He walked over to me, and knelt down. Since he was talking to me the whole group seemed to have finally noticed me, "Are you interested in archery, little boy?"

"Ts…" I slowed, realizing that a child would be more likely to introduce himself using his personal name. Though as a kid myself I was certain that I probably used my family name…too late now, "Mitsuhiko-kun."

"Ah, Mitsuhiko-kun." Something like amusement flashed in the teenager's eyes as he held his hand out, "I'm Sato Akio, it's nice to meet you."

I took his hand, and found myself smiling. He was definitely an archer, it was obvious by the calluses on his fingers. My own fingers were childlike, soft…nothing like the trained appendages I had back in my old life. Part of me sighed sadly.

"Do you think that it is possible, if I find a bow, if I use your yard to practice?" I found myself asking. Back home I'd become rather skilled at archery, and as I said before, keeping my hands and mind busy was a personal way of calming myself down. It would also give me a little of my routine back.

"That's fine by me." Akio said, glancing over his shoulder at the club who all shrugged. "And I think we have a bow that would be just about your size, Mitsuhiko-kun. Archery is hard at first though…you do realize this don't you?"

"Hai." I replied, giving him a smile. Akio smirked and reached over my head to retrieve a bow that was much smaller. "I used this as a kid. I was keeping it here for safe-keeping…but it's just sitting and gathering dust. If you promise to take care of it you can have it if you like…"

I blinked. This person was very giving, to give something like this away. My fingers closed around the bow, and I felt a twinge of relief thrill through me. Akio smiled in a knowing way before pulling out a leather guard.

"You'll need this…" He started to say before I began expertly fastening it to my arm. He blinked, "You've really thought this through, haven't you Mitsuhiko-kun?"

I only smiled in reply. Akio blinked, before turning back to the group that had gathered behind him. He winked at them, probably thinking I wouldn't notice. Was he expecting me to crack under the pressure perhaps? Maybe that was why he offered his bow so willingly to a child.

"What say we help little Mitsuhiko-kun here figure out the ropes of archery?" He asked, the group either snickered or shot me something like a sympathetic glance. I was beginning to wonder if my first impression of Akio had been wrong, that perhaps he was attempting to set me up, but I pushed it away.

It was going to hurt, surely. Especially since my fingers were so soft. I walked out of that room with my head held high and easily found the targets. I narrowed my eyes as I found some arrows that would better suit my small bow, and notched one.

It was hard going. My arm was not as strong as usual, and as I began to pull the string back my muscles screamed in protest. Archery is much harder than it looks. It requires quite a bit of strength to pull the string back in a manner that will launch the arrow properly. I grit my teeth, and, unsurprisingly, my fingers lost hold on the string and the arrow flew drunkenly through the air before settling on the grass.

Ignoring the snickers behind me I calmly retrieved it, before taking stance once more and pulling the string as far as I could. I found that, even now, I could pull it further than the first time. However, like the first time, my fingers lost their hold and the arrow flopped down.

I picked it up several times more. Each time I pulled the string back it became a bit easier for me to do so. My old instincts were kicking in, over-riding the clumsiness of my untrained muscles and ingraining the information into them. Finally, the arrow flew true, and with a thunk landed near the middle of the target. Not a bulls-eye by any means, but I found myself grinning all the same.

It was only then that I realized that the snickering behind me had gone to something more of an awed silence. I glanced over my shoulder to see the group of teen boys staring at me in complete shock. Akio wore off first, and smiled as he knelt down next to me.

"Well, you're a natural." He said with an easy-going smile. I shook my head to myself, no, I had years of practice. Akio glanced down at my fingers, which were dripping with blood. I winced, realizing just then that the string had cut the soft skin on my hands. "Your fingers will get tougher in no time, but you were pushing yourself rather hard to cut yourself like that."

SECTION CHANGE GOES HERE SO WE DON'T GET ALL CONFUSED ABOUT WHAT'S GOING ON

It became a habit, after school I would sneak away from the group and go to the archery club. Despite the fact that I was so young most of them had come to accept me as a member. And I grew more and more skilled by the day. Soon enough I was back to my old caliber, getting a bulls-eye was easy for somebody like me.

"I wish you were old enough to compete in the competition!" One of the guys that had a twin bent down, his name was Daichi, his twin brother was named Daiki. "Literally the twentieth bulls-eye I've seen this kid hit."

"Maybe we could just say Mitsuhiko's a midget or something?" Daiki added with a smirk down at me.

"Don't they prefer to be called little people or something?" Daichi queried. Another member of the club, Hotaku, shrugged his shoulders in a manner that suggested he honestly didn't have the slightest clue. Akio and the final member of the club, Jirou, both chuckled.

It felt good, to be honest with you. Even though they didn't realize that I wasn't just some kid who was really good at archery…it felt good to be around people who were my actual age. Conan was nice enough, but I couldn't quite relax around him because he'd become suspicious.

"Alright, we need to get moving!" Akio finally said, breaking up our conversation with his serious tone. "The competition is next Tuesday, and if you can't all at least be as good as Mitsuhiko-kun by then, then we have to take the kid out for lunch whenever he asks. No matter who tags along, or what."

The group all but scrambled to the targets, intent on not paying to feed anybody if they could help it. I laughed, and picked up my own small bow and wandered over to where my target was. I notched my arrow and easily sent it flying to the target. It struck the center and I found a grin of satisfaction. It vanished though, when I heard a sound of awe behind me.

"Wow!" Genta's loud tone had me spinning to look at him. Not only him, but Ayumi, Conan, and Haibara as well. I blinked, squirming a bit as Genta hopped over to me, "Mitsuhiko I didn't know you could do that! That was AWESOME!"

"He is quite good, isn't he?" Haibara said calmly.

"You hit it right in the middle!" Ayumi said, "And it looked like it was the easiest thing!"

"It probably is easy." Genta spoke, his initial awe wearing off as he pried the bow from my fingers. He tugged at the string and blinked in surprise, then tried to pull it harder.

"You snap that string and you're buying a replacement for him, Genta." Conan warned. Genta blinked, and handed the bow back to me before my peer turned to look me in the eye, "When did you start archery, Mitsuhiko-kun?"

"Just last week…" I lied, and knew that he could tell. He blinked, perhaps wondering what reason I would have to hide the time I started something like this. I gave him a smile as Akio walked up behind me.

"Friends of yours, Mitsuhiko?" Akio asked, dropping the formality on my name as if we'd been pals since childhood…erm…well… "Perhaps there are more archery prodigies in this little group as well…"

"Unlikely." Haibara muttered.

"You've been ditching us after school!" Genta said, sounding irritated. I winced, I should have realized that they would have become curious about where I was going everyday. "Don't you care about the Detective Boys anymore?"

"Archery is a skill that can be useful in detective work!" I defended hotly, "If one is good at it they can confidently use their skills to catch criminals without killing them, and if you're really good you don't even have to worry about hurting them!"

"You'd be surprised what helps." Haibara said, "Ne, Edogawa-kun?"

"I'll come with you." I said, an attempt to stop Ayumi from looking so wounded and Genta looking so downright pissed. I took off all of my archery gear and placed it carefully where they properly belonged before running to the gate. They seemed a bit more relaxed. "So what are we doing?"

"Looking for you." Conan said flatly.

"Don't tell me you guys came snooping around even though we didn't have anything to do…" I sighed heavily, longing to go back and mess with my archery more. I pushed it away though, and managed to feel a bit better about hanging out with the younger version of my friends.

"We're all going to Hakase's!" Ayumi said with a smile, "He said he had a new game."

I smothered the guilt I felt at having messed with one of his inventions, heck, gone down in the basement with his instructions not to do just that. I wandered after the group, and we quickly found our way to Hakase's place. After a moment I looked over at Conan, "How did you find me?"

"Tailed you." Conan replied nonchalantly. I winced, realizing that I hadn't even noticed them following after me. And my young friends weren't exactly known for being inconspicuous. I heaved a sigh to myself, a little depressed at how low my observational skills were over this.

The door suddenly flew open with such force that I had to jump out of the path of the person exiting the building. It caught me off guard, and I think Conan as well for he sputtered for a moment, surprised as I at who the newcomer was.

"H-Hattori!" Conan sputtered. I blinked in astonishment, not having expected the Osakan to be visiting. He was in mid-sentence, breaking off from some sort of argument he was having with the girl behind him.

"There ya are!" He exclaimed. The girl behind him looked confused, mouthed something about him looking for 'Kudou-kun' and I heard Conan let out a nervous, and slightly irritated sound. "Ah, it's the kids…"

"Hi, Hattori-oniisan." Genta and Ayumi both chimed. I was focusing on the girl behind him, riveted because something was occurring to me. A niggling of information that worked like a worm through my mind.

I KNEW this girl, but I didn't KNOW this girl.

It was like…for some reason she wasn't in my head. I struggled to think of her name, and felt something like sickness stab through my stomach. Hadn't I done something like this earlier? Something with somebody equally as important?

Kobayashi-sensei…

But this girl, could I be mistaken? Perhaps Kobayashi-sensei's name had truly been some odd slip of my mind. There was nothing odd in forgetting a name…while she was married to Shiratori-sama in the future…but…Perhaps that's why.

Because she became Shiratori-sensei to me?

Perhaps this girl was just a random stranger, and not at all important in Hattori-senpai's life?

"Heiji…" The girl groaned, "Why were you so bent on coming here?"

"Ahou…" Hattori snapped in reply.

It's odd how I could remember that the word 'ahou' was important. I suddenly vividly remembered me standing on a sidewalk, next to Ayumi. We were in Grade Six at the time, and she had looked over at Hattori-senpai with curiosity that had started in our childhood.

"Heiji-niisan…" She asked, the only one of our group that called the Osakan by that name, "Why do you always tell her that she's an idiot?"

"I've never heard you call anybody else that." I had said. "It's rather rude to keep it reserved for the person that you're going to marry soon…"

"I'd wanna hit him." Genta had added.

"Tch." He'd replied, "Ya kids'll never understand…"

I stood staring at this girl, knowing with the most sick feeling in the world that I was supposed to know her. She'd married Hattori. She was important. She had just recently been blessed with his child…she helped take care of us, and many cases in Osaka were spent at the Hattori household.

"I don't remember you." I said. "I didn't remember Koboyashi-sensei, and I don't remember you…"

"Ah-le? That's Kazuha-neechan." Ayumi said, blinking at me. I hardly moved, just stared at the girl who had a name but…why were my memories of her so spotty? And the ones of Koboyashi-sensei as well…they eluded my grasp.

"Mitsuhiko?" Conan asked, something like veiled concern in his tone.

"Did you hit your head perhaps?" Haibara asked me, her calm eyes searching my panicked ones. I hadn't noticed that she stepped in front of me like that. Uncomfortable, I took a step back. A feeling akin to panic slammed into me.

"I-I…" I floundered. Part of me longed, suddenly, to come clean here and now. To spill my guts to them on the slate colored sidewalk, and pray that they wouldn't think me insane. If I gave them enough facts, said enough things, surely they'd believe me.

I wanted somebody to think with me on this, somebody who wasn't panicking at the thought of having their mind slowly erased.

Oh Kami, was that what was happening? Was something…something with my travel through the past causing my mind to deteriorate? Or maybe it was an unknown side-effect of the Apotoxin? I tried to calm my whirring thoughts, shut out the world around me for a few moments, and just focused on organizing the logic I knew.

How many things had I forgotten? Well…as far as I knew there were two…

I stiffened.

"Those headaches…the strange flashes." I choked, "I had two of those."

But how was I to know? Was that really the cause of it? Were my insights, my flashes that showed me the area without time, the possibilities of the past, present, and future…was it somehow destroying the fabric of my mind? Did that mean, if the flashes kept happening, I'd become nothing more than a drooling person with an infantile mind?

How does one know for sure about something like this? It could be a coincidence, the number of things that came to my attention I had forgotten. After all, it was nearly impossible to notice you'd forgotten something until in a situation that brought forth that something to your attention.

It could, still, be some unknown symptom of that drug. Without thinking I turned to Haibara, "About that thing you crea…" I stopped myself, snapped my mouth shut so quickly that I actually bit my tongue. Both she and Conan were looking at me, her eyes stretching wide as context clues filled in the blanks. And with paranoia like hers, the paranoia she needed to survive, who could blame her for thinking that the one thing she created would be that.

"Th-that story…" I rasped, "That you made up the other day Haibara-san. How does that go again?"

She relaxed, but there was a wariness in her eyes that hadn't been there before. "I don't know…what story?" She queried, tilting her head. I struggled to explain, failed, and turned on my heel and did the only thing I could think to do.

I ran away.

Yes. I am a coward. Yes, I realize that is not the manner in which I should have gone about things. But I found myself bolting. Like a hare being chased by a dog. I heard them yell after me, all but Haibara. I'm sure, certain, that she's ten-times more certain about what I was going to ask than before I had tried to cover it up with the stupid story excuse.

"Kami!" I hissed, running away and noticing they were following me. Hattori included. I was probably obviously hiding something. After all, you don't run away if there is nothing to hide. As I ran my lungs felt ready to burst.

I'm an idiot really.

A detective, and I can't think of a reason, an excuse, that would lead attention away from me? I've heard the most outrageous of alibis, seen culprits do the most idiotic things in response to cornering themselves.

But I don't think I've ever had one that just…bolted, when the cornering first started. Looking back, I think I could have found some manner to worm my way out of it. Yet obviously now I couldn't. I was running away because I had something to hide.

You only ran if you were guilty.

Knowing full-well that it would be oh-so easy to get flattened by a truck or something, I darted into the busy intersection. There wasn't much time for the light, and I probably wasn't going to make it across. As I thought of these things, made these observations, I didn't even think to pay attention to where I was going. I slammed, hard, into the side of somebody as I began my journey across.

I fell back, and landed on my rear. The group came to a panting halt behind me, at the edge of the sidewalk, and the light changed. I was hauled up, and pulled to the opposite side by whoever I had run into. I found myself looking up in eyes the color of grass.

_Poison._ I corrected myself. The venomous irritation swirling in the girl's green eyes was so potent that I longed to tear my small hand away from hers. Red hair framed her face, a foreigner, clearly. Though when she spoke her Japanese was flawless.

"Baka…" She spat, "What do you think you were doing? This isn't a playground, didn't your damned parents teach you any better? You freaking idiot, you were going to be flattened if it wasn't for me, you know that?"

"If it wasn't for you." I found myself replying in a dry tone, despite the fact that her eyes flashed at me in a dangerous manner, "I wouldn't have ended up on the ground like that in the first place."

She looked irritated, and glanced around sharply suddenly as if just realizing something. With an annoyed hiss she tugged me up and said very loudly, "I'm so glad I've found you! I've been looking everywhere! Come on, let's go, this weather is much to warm to continue playing our game!" And started to briskly walk in the opposite direction of my friends without releasing my hand.

"Le-" I started to yell, fearing that this was some sort of crazed teenaged kidnapper. Her venomous eyes met mine, smoldering slightly but there was a twinge of fear mixed among that potent irritation. I found my mouth snapping shut.

"Stay quiet. I'm not taking you very far, just do me this favor and stick with me for a bit kid, and it'll get you away from whomever was running you down anyways." This was said with the hint of a smirk, she glanced at me and winked.

"Perceptive." I remarked in return, as if it was high praise.

It was as we were running that I began to fully take in her appearance. She was, as I said, most definitely foreign. A pale girl with flaming red hair and venomous green eyes. She was a bit lanky, but there was a dangerous hint to strength about her that made me feel suddenly nervous. My age, real one, or close to it most certainly. Though she could have been tall for her age for all I know.

Her clothing caught my eye, and some part of my stomach churned.

"You sure wear dark colors." I commented, "Isn't it dangerous to wear black in heat?"

"I have to wear it." She replied, turning to give me a grin that sent chills up my spine. "If I don't, how will my new friends ever be able to find me in this big city filled with oh-so many people?"

"Oh." I replied.

Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap. I do not often swear, or use foul language. Yet this most certainly called for it. It seemed that, of all the people in Tokyo to bump into, it happened to be a member of the Black Organization.

As if to make things worse, suddenly, chimes roared through my ears. My feet froze, and the girl ended up yanking me off of my feet before she noticed that I'd stopped. White pain developed behind my skull, right between my eyes. I groaned, trying to let go of her fingers so that I could hold my head. She held my hand fast though.

"What…the hell is that sound…" She gasped. I opened my eyes a slit, the light was painful. It felt as if it was causing a strange pressure to build behind my eyeballs. I feared, irrationally so, that they would burst out of my head.

She…could hear the chimes? But before I could contemplate the matter I was thrown. Thrown into the vision, and I dragged the girl who had lugged me away from the street with me. Her surprised screams faded among the notes.

Together, we spun through the place of No Time. Through the place of Endless Possibility. Through Infinity.

* * *

_**Cliff-hanger!**_

_**And an OC!**_

_**An EPIC OC! **_

_**She's so random, just popped in my head halfway through this chapter and I thought "You are the plot twist I've been waiting for! Huzzah!"**_

_**X3 You'll get to learn a ton about her next episode…**_

_**I mean chapter. Lawl**_

_**And I'm trying, I promise, to update as quickly as possible.**_

_**But College just started…**_

_**And I had FCOTF muse explosion X3**_

_**Reviews be lurved**_


	5. An All Around Unpleasant Ordeal

_Disclaimer:_

_Own? No, sorry XD_

_**Ah, wari wari you all**_

_**I know it's been a long time. To explain myself…**_

_**First I started Catalyst, of course Iggy snatched my muse, as he always does.**_

_**Then, when I was just getting to where I could divvy out all that said muse…**_

_**My computer broke. D:**_

_**Yeah, so, I didn't have anything to write for months and months and basically died. XD**_

_**Anyways, here's the long awaited chapter of Nostalgic Remedies, hope you're still reading.**_

_**Akemi-chan- XD hahaha, would you?**_

_**Random Reviewer Who Didn't Have a Name- XD Hahaha, lol, sorry for the long wait. Hope you're still reading. DX My computer broke so…bah, sorry about the wait anyways. Here's the next chapter, I hope you enjoy.**_

_**Black Sun Upon an Icy Sky- XD Yes, DC episodes train the mind.**_

_**ruthc93- Hahaha, irritating isn't it? Kind of like how Shinichi won't tell Ran. XD Let you in on a secret, if Gosho's anything like me he loves making people squirm in frustration over it. XD**_

_**Pally- Oh the archery thing…I wanted to give him something and that's just what he seemed to like. Mitsuhiko's kind of an accuracy guy, what with all his science stuff, he strives to be as correct as possible. So I thought archery was the perfect weapon for our little hero.**_

_**Sock Monsta- INDEED! What will happen! XD read down there and you'll know.**_

_**Em Phantom- Hahaha, so glad you want to see the OC. XD I love her, she was supposed to be around for maybe two or three chapters just to pick things up and make them a bit more exciting, but suddenly I'm working out ways to make her a canon in the story. Hahaha**_

_**Eelven Girl- X3 Thank you, very much. I hope you'll enjoy reading. Hahaha, yes, it'd be nice if he told them right off, but NOT telling them makes him squirm, which is soooo fun to write.**_

* * *

_Chapter Five- An All Around Unpleasant Ordeal_

The place was white, a blinding colorless hue that made me want to close my eyes. My hand was being crushed in a vice grip, and I cracked open my eyes to see the girl standing there, eyes shut tight. Chanting to herself. "This is not happening…"

Over and over.

A mantra, a song. The chimes in the air confused me, made my head swim sickeningly almost. I glanced about, watched as the multiplied images beneath the glaring white flickered, grew, fizzed out. Uncomprehendable.

There was something different though. I noticed, as I stared. Fissures, snaking through each picture. Criss-crossing over the whiteness, and glowing almost black. Glowing, yes, it was the only description to aptly bring that forth. A glowing black.

Pain lanced through my skull, and I moaned.

_**There it is…**_

Words, neither mine, nor the girl crumbled to the…floor, next to me. Words, not thought of spoken. But ringing, chiming through the air. Through this strange No Time world, these words were acknowledged as a reality. A truth.

_**There it is!**_

Excited, almost shouting at me. I grimaced. Those words seared into my brain. The girl at my side sobbed. Would she go insane because of this? Would I go insane because of this? There was a surreality to the world we were in. As if it was so mind-boggling that our sanity couldn't possibly remain completely in tact after connecting with it. How delightfully terrifying, knowing with your logical mind that soon you would be going insane…

_**The very thing that should never exist.**_

_Stop!_ I wanted to scream. But I had no throat. Or it seemed as if I didn't. My hands seemed like someone else's hands. My legs belonged to someone else. The pounding in my chest wasn't possibly mine. Someone else's. Something else's.

**The Paradox.**

I screamed then. No throat or not. It burned from me, tore from my mouth like a living beast. A snake, truly, slithering out of my gullet and dragging it's scaly skin over the inside of my throat. Hissing, snapping, tearing into the world around us. Shattering it. The white, the sound of tinkling glass wavered in the air, and I was suspended in black with shards of white floating around me.

Pieces fell by me like glass. Rained passed reflecting bits of life. The chimes grew louder, and louder, until finally I slammed into the ground. My head was spinning sickeningly, I opened my eyes, and found myself in the same place again.

The utter white, the black cracks.

So that was it then, surely this was my mind breaking into insanity. I almost laughed, feeling a sense that could almost be called relief. This, however, was startled out of me because there was already laughter tinkling around me. I looked over, blinking in astonishment.

My companion, the one I'd dragged here.

I crawled over to her, feeling the shards where the white had cracked bury into my hands. It hurt, but I had to make sure she was okay right? I reached for her, and as soon as I touched her everything vanished.

There was everything.

And there was nothing.

Images flew by. Sounds. Tastes. Smells. Feelings. They soared through who I was completely. Not just my mind, but my very soul. Something that I had no doubt existed now, I could feel it there. Deep inside, writhing with pain.

I was losing some too. Those same things being torn from me. Flying to her, surely. The detective side of me could deduce that much. So if I was giving her all these things, then maybe it was her throwing these things my way.

Things…no memories. They had to be. The scent of gunpowder, blood grimy and sticky on my hands. Darkness, so very complete that it was impossible to escape. Cold voices, muttering words. A name, uttered at the edge of my consciousness.

We were there an eternity. Infinity had passed, come and faded into dust on it's own. A paradox, that was. Passing the time of infinity, the number, the moment. And then, just as I thought we would spiral into our death, fizzle out of existence, as infinity had, the white came. Burning, hot, against the darkness.

Then, we struck the curb.

* * *

Footsteps, by my head. It was the first thing that came to me. Before feeling, or thought, or emotion. I heard, everything in the world. It was like my auditory senses had been multiplied for a brief moment, cranking the volume up on the universe and leaving me stunned.

Pain came next. Excruciating, in my head. I clutched it, panting, biting back a scream. It felt as if a world's worth of information had been crammed into my skull. As if words had been seared into my head, burning their way viciously through my skull. Vying for my immediate attention.

I twitched, opening my eyes. Several alarmed screams tore through the world, and I found my eyes locking with green ones. I knew, immediately, that she was fairing better than I was. Perhaps because it was I who had dragged her there. I who had disrupted the balance, she was but an innocent bystander dragged into my un-universe.

Fear, for an instant filled her eyes, and then she was up. Running through the crowd, and leaving me. Those screams continued, alarmed exclamations. Words that made no sense in my head. Unable to process anything at all, it seemed, except for the fact that she was afraid of me.

Frightened. Because I was an abomination. One that shouldn't have existed.

I groaned, and then it became too much. The last thing I saw were a pair of red sneakers, and then unconsciousness came and slammed into me. With so much force that there was no fighting it. It could have been death itself, for all I knew.

* * *

I woke and the pain in my head was, thank Kami-sama, reduced to nothing more than a throb. Not like that lancing pain. It seemed the universe was in it's proper order as well, for my ears didn't seem to be picking up any extra noises than usual. I pulled a hand to my face before opening my eyes, blinking as they brushed against something damp.

"He's ALIVE!" The relieved shout made me wince, but I pulled my fingers down to see a very worried looking group surrounding me. Genta, Ayumi, Conan, Haibara, Agasa-hakase, Hattori and Kazuha. All crowded around the couch.

"Perhaps it would be best if we were to give him some space." Haibara suggested, cool and clinical as always. Everyone backed off immediately, almost as if I was on fire.

"What happened?" Ayumi whimpered.

"This kid here said you were stable enough not to call the hospital." Hattori said, gesturing to Conan who was watching me with something crossed between intense worry and scrutiny. I blinked at them, and laughed.

"I…ah…" I swallowed, hating the way my voice shook.

I had been through one of the most horrifying things in my life. Even now it felt as if there was a little too much information in my head. Like extra things had been forcibly shoved in there, and were threatening to push the rest of my knowledge out.

"You gave us quite the scare." Agasa said, "Did you fall down and hit your head?"

"H-hai…" I said, deciding this was best to stick with. Conan's eyes narrowed, and I found myself looking at my hands. "I was in such a hurry…I sh-should have been paying closer attention to what I was doing. I bumped into someone."

The truth, or close to it. I clung to that, letting the minor honesty of it give me a little bit of strength. Conan seemed, for the moment, satisfied with this answer, and hopped away to go talk to Hattori. Kazuha remained with me, as well as Genta and Ayumi. Hakase vanished into the house, and Haibara all but vanished from sight.

"I called your parents, Mitsuhiko-kun." Agasa said, and I realized that I'd somehow lost track of at least three minutes. My throbbing head was throwing me for a loop, this was for sure. That strange sensation almost made me sick. "I'll go take you home now."

"Hai…" I said, and hardly protested when Kazuha picked me up. It felt so odd, because part of me was comfortable enough with her, knew her…and another part automatically wanted to flinch because a stranger was picking me up.

Knew her, didn't know her.

I was getting tired of all of it. What I wanted, at that moment, was to sleep. To sleep and to wake up and find that I was back home. Though…I still had to save Conan…

I could suffer for my friend. Still wanted to sleep though.

* * *

I was immediately, unsurprisingly, sent to bed as soon as I walked in the door. I hardly minded, on the contrary, I think I would have begged to go to sleep if any other options had arisen. So it was that I was tucked into my bed, and found a strange feeling of comfort and nostalgia descending on me.

Sleep was a menagerie of thoughts, emotions, and memories. Not all of them mine. Dancing before me, it was almost like being back in the place again…however, there was the obvious absence of any agony. Thank Kami-sama.

My mind was, in it's subconsciousness, attempting to sort out the massive amounts of energy that had been shoved into my head. Even through all of it, watching as the images flipped through, the sounds screaming at me like fading echoes, it seemed as if I would never make true sense of any of it.

When I woke, it felt as if merely two seconds had passed since I closed my eyes, and yet dawn light was filtering through the window. My head was still swimming, but thankfully it didn't feel as if I was about to have all the contents of my mind dump onto the carpet.

I sat up in bed, rubbing my head a little bit. The cogs in my brain seemed unable to turn properly, a slow sluggish feeling had descended upon me at this point. Still, I managed to stumble from bed, and get dressed for school.

My mind was focused on the dreams, tendrils of them were graspable to me, but I didn't seem to have much more information than the moment I ran into her. She was, as I'd thought, part of the Black Organization. How she got there was among the thousands of memories I was forced to watch , buried where I couldn't seem to reach it. Her intentions for what she was doing in the square seemed to be just as elusive.

So I knew nothing. I sighed, pausing as I moved to push the door open. That's when it came to me. One tiny shred of information, perhaps, but one nonetheless. A name, of all things. I shut my eyes, blinking, and murmured, "Riley."

Her name.

I knew her name. At least, her given name. It was clearly foreign, but then, so was she. My mind churned with even more curiosity now. It was there, in my head, the answer to all of the questions I had. How could I get to them though?

I heaved a sigh, and ducked out the door. No use being late for school.

* * *

School, as you may have well expected, went by as nothing more than a pathetic blur. I easily shot down any questions answered in class, and did most of the 'homework' while Kobayashi-sensei prattled on about the lesson. Things I'd already learned, and wasn't exactly excited to be going through again.

Eventually, after I'd finished the homework, I pulled out a notebook and started taking my own notes. In short-hand, of course, since I had no desire to let the average Joe understand what I was writing down in this.

I narrowed my eyes. So I knew for sure that I had forgotten two things, at least. And they appeared to be consistent with the times I'd been taken to the place of No-Time…no, perhaps that was an inadequate description of that place. The place of Possibility, yes, that suited it more.

Because time certainly appeared to be slowed there, but I don't think it froze completely. I put a question mark next to it, before rubbing my temples. Oh Kami-sama, did I just go off on the NAME of the place I go to? Does it really need one?

I sighed, but found myself sketching out…well, attempting to sketch out what I could see. My artistic skills couldn't hold a candle to what Ayumi could work out, but they were decent enough. Besides, I doubted even a professional would truly be able to capture the place I had been, with words or pictures.

Going there had always started with symptoms. A headache, and most predominantly, the bells. The distinctive chimes. Agasa's invention, in fact, had made a sound similar to that as I was taken through time. Was this significant? Was music, melody, somehow important to the fabric of time?

More unanswered questions, this was proving to be terribly unpromising. I continued moving my pencil, eyes tracking the movement as I thought about the things that had gone down. Twice I had entered that place, and two things had been all but erased from my mind.

No, wait, three times. I stopped, pencil freezing over the paper for a moment. Did this mean that I had forgotten something? But what? How can one tell, after all, whether or not they happen to be forgetting something? Unless it's that strange feeling you get, where you know as you walk out of the house that you're leaving something behind, but can't even begin to place what exactly it happened to be.

Again, unanswered questions. And a terribly unsettling feeling in my gut.

The third time was so different though…because Riley was there? Yes, Riley, for that matter, was another thing I had to think about. Who was she? Where did she come from? I found myself feeling a sting of frustration.

Because I KNEW the answers to those particular questions. They were in my head, somewhere, I was just having trouble filing them out and bringing them individually to my attention. I heaved another almost irritated sigh, and scrawled a massive question mark onto my paper.

* * *

The incident the day before left me grateful for one thing at least, I was allowed to return with no argument. In fact, no one bothered me all day long. I realized as I was waving goodbye that that could be good or bad.

It either meant Conan's suspicions were gone…or that they'd been doubled, and he didn't think I was about to answer any questions even if he tried. Thus resorting to the silent approach of just watching me, waiting for me to make a mistake.

Fifteen thousand yen says it's the latter.

I found myself waving them off with a smile frozen on my face, and as soon as they rounded the corner I didn't go straight home. I walked, for a good hour and a half, keeping my eyes out for anybody who decided it would be fantastic to stalk me today.

Not that it would have done anyone any good, I realized belatedly, as I wasn't exactly parading around my house telling them all I happened to be my teenaged self, shrunken down, who got sent back in time by the professor's experiment on accident.

Hahaha, oh yes, that story is super believable.

I groaned, leaning against a wall and for a few moments just letting myself watch the people walk by. I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, growing with each passing moment. Anxiety, massive amounts of unshakeable anxiety. I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to keep my mind from wandering.

I failed, of course. I was, to be honest with you, terrified. Scared so much that I wanted to find someone, anyone, to talk to about it. To just confide in. But how could I do that? Who could I confide in? Conan? Even he didn't know what I was going through.

I might be losing my mind as a result of Hakase's experiment.

And something had changed in the balance of things. Suddenly, I was something that was not supposed to exist. An abomination, a paradox. I shut my eyes. What did that mean? That eventually my whole pathetic existence would just snuff itself out as the world attempted to restore it's own balance?

All of our days our numbered, but I had a sinking feeling deep in my gut that my numbers were counting away at lightspeed, and I was standing by, helplessly holding my hands out in front of me just repeatedly begging it to stop.

Death, delightful thing to think about.

But then, that wasn't exactly what scared me the most. It was the other thing, the concept that my mind was deteriorating. That parts of it were vanishing. Sure, the first few times were people I'd met, but what about next time? What if I forgot how to read? Or even eat?

What if I was reduced to nothing more than an infant shoved in my young, but still not THAT young, body? Doomed for the rest of my life to…to be half-there.

It was a terrifying concept for someone like me, who relies on their wit and intelligence to do what they LOVE.

There was the fear of becoming mentally disabled…and then there was the fear that I would just lose my mind. Who was to say that I hadn't lost my mind YET. There was no knowing. Everything that had happened to me so far, it was so clearly mad. So mad that I couldn't tell anybody.

What if it was something in my head? What if I had fallen down the stairs, and was lying there, in a coma somewhere, and this was all some insane dream? A dream that played out as my very mind just died from lack of use.

I stood up, rather abruptly.

This was clearly getting me nowhere. All I was doing was worrying, being melancholy. Talking myself in circles, over and over. It did nothing more than freak me out, and what the hell was the point in that, pardon my rude language.

I pointed myself toward home. If Conan had followed me maybe he found my strange route quite odd, but there was nothing he could truly distinguish from it. Haha.

Kami-sama, I'm so paranoid.

I pushed through the crowds of people, realizing with a start that I had eaten neither breakfast nor lunch, and as such my stomach had resorted to apparent acts of cannibalism, and was pitching a large fit. (Not really of course, it certainly felt like it was eating itself though.)

Spurred on by such instinctual feelings, I all but tore my way through the crowd to get home. Don't judge, I was half starving to death, as a more accurate description of how I was feeling. I didn't have dinner the night BEFORE either, for that matter.

I'm not like Genta, but goodness if I didn't feel like moaning and groaning about not getting my food.

So it was I found myself swinging open my gate in what seemed like an hour, but was honestly merely a matter of moments. I was halfway up the sidewalk, thinking of what I could possibly rig together, when I suddenly froze into place.

Something was distinctly…off.

My eyes widened, and I let my gaze travel over the house, searching for even the smallest of inconsistencies. My hunger, at this point, had been all but forgotten. All I could seem to focus on was the pounding inside of my chest.

Everything SEEMED fine.

But it wasn't. My intuition screamed itself hoarse at me over this, ringing alarm bells in my head and making me break out in a cold sweat. It wasn't so much as anything I could see…but…I know this must sound odd, but it was something I could feel.

As if, my whole life was on a scale, and that balance had been tipped. Almost imperceptibly so, but enough that the distinct sensation that the world seemed even the tiniest bit off kilter was present. I stared around the yard, trying, desperately, to pinpoint the source.

The car was gone. There we go, it had vanished from my mind for the first few moments, but now I noticed it as if someone had dropped a massive pink rabbit in the middle of the driveway. There was no vehicle. Now, both of my parents worked, but there was usually at least one vehicle in the drive.

No it was empty, and I felt my apprehension beginning to grow.

This morning, the house had been silent. DEADLY silent. I was the only one walking around…why? What did that mean? I stared up the walk, suddenly feeling as if I should be cautious, wary, when entering my own home. It was a terribly unsettling feeling, I didn't like it at all.

I walked up to the door, and pressed my back against the wall. I reached up, and twisted the nob. It seemed, but I'm thinking it was my hyper-sensitivity to the world all of a sudden, as if the door swung open almost eerily.

Beckoning me inside.

I was hoping, beyond all hope, that I was an idiot. That somehow I would run into my sister in the hallway, and she would give me a look that said she thought I was quite stupid, and therefore needed to stay far away from her.

The house seemed silent. That, of course, could mean nothing. I was working myself up, for perhaps nothing…right? So the car was gone. So nobody was home…

Why did I feel like this? As if someone had me in a scope, and was ready to pull the trigger. I kept my back flat against the wall, and slid inside the house. It seemed like a cold cavern to me, unfamiliar, not friendly in the least.

I swallowed, bit back the strange paranoia rising within me. I had no weapons to speak of, my bow was upstairs and I happened to be rather lacking in any other spectacular abilities. I was short, you see. I found myself suddenly invisioning myself being mercilessly kidnapped.

How mortifying, for one thing.

For another…I wouldn't be able to do much. I WAS, at this point, a child. What could I do? Bite, kick, scream? Against somebody determined enough that was jack. And that was saying they'd just kidnap me.

The door slammed shut behind me.

I jumped, whirling around and staring in that direction. My heart leaped into my throat, and I pressed myself against the wall, feeling, for a brief instant, true terror. My mind scrambled for something, anything to grasp onto, and I failed.

Maybe I'm a wimp, but before being taken to that place I knew only an inkling of what They could do, yesterday I learned everything They did. And how merciless They could be, and even if I couldn't tag actual words to it, my instincts were attuned to those emotions that weren't mine. Letting me know that if there was ever someone to fear, it was Them.

Cloaked all in black, leaning against the wall in a manner that made me think almost looked feline. Red hair spilling from beneath a black ball cap, an almost amused smirk on her face. She switched the lock, and stood in front of the door. Predatory, in control.

"Konnichiwa, Time Traveler." She said, curving smile. I felt as if someone had punched me right in the stomach. So she knew…and seemed to be able to sort through things much better than me. "You have a few questions to answer."

"Fancy meeting you here." I swallowed, "Riley-san."

* * *

_**Done!**_

_**XD Sorry, so sorry for the wait**_

_**And I hate to say it, but it'll be followed by another wait**_

_**Won't be able to update til' after Winter Break. :3**_

_**Reviews so loved.**_


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